


Shadowplay

by Phiso, renaissance



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Art by Phiso, Cold War, Collaboration, Fusion - The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Gen, M/M, Post-First War with Voldemort, Spies & Secret Agents, Words by renaissance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-20 14:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15536670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phiso/pseuds/Phiso, https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: The year is 1990. Although the wall no longer looms over Berlin, two old friends reunite in its shadow, each waging a cold war of their own. Remus Lupin and Sirius Black have spent the last nine years thinking the worst of each other. This would be fine if they were taking a holiday to work through their problems in their own time. Instead, they're enemy spies who've been brought together for a mission that only they can carry out, and the future of the magical world hangs in the balance.





	1. Berlin

**Author's Note:**

> From the author:
> 
> Thanks to: Phiso, who has been an excellent support network and story advisor, as well as providing the wonderful art pieces you'll see throughout; tobermoriansass for beta reading and helping me get this thing into shape, as well as some help with the German; moonygarou for more help with German; retiredunicorn for help with French; and the Big Bang mods, for running this event and giving me the perfect excuse to write the AU of my dreams.
> 
> On the other languages, there are only a couple of lines you need to worry about, which are in Part 2. If you're on desktop, you can hover over these for a translation, or check the end notes of the chapter on mobile/e-reader.
> 
> As this is an AU based on a comedy film, I haven't done too much to earn it the M rating, but there are also some dark themes. Here are the main warnings: sporadic violence typical of both canons, a brief scene of torture, psychological torture themes, (mostly psychological) child abuse themes.
> 
> From the artist:
> 
> Thank you, Renaissance, for writing this wonderful fic; I knew the instant I saw the summary that I wanted to be a part of it, and it's been a delight from start to finish. Thanks Tech, Moma, and the good sports in my dance class who all helped with pose references; everything would've turned out wonky without y'all. Thanks Dustmouth and YumeNoveau for your encouragement and your tips regarding materials; you helped me believe in myself and find a medium I had always loved and always wanted to try. And last, but not least, thank you, mods, especially myprettycabinet, for reaching out to me and recruiting me as an artist in the first place. It's been years since I felt confident enough to draw anything, and now, thanks to you, I'm excited to pick up my pencil and see what comes out.

 

West of the Iron Curtain was just the same as the East; the streets this late at night were cloaked in the same dim glow and the sounds were the same, scuffling strays, distant cars, the odd gunshot to keep everyone on their toes. The light of a full moon—last night, waning gibbous now through a gauzy screen of cloud—didn’t care where in the world it found you. The bars of the cage which protected the outside world from the wayward wolf were solid as ever.

The only difference, Remus reflected, was which cadre of tyrants had drilled their flagpoles into the concrete. Although he supposed it didn’t matter as much now that the Wall lay in ruins.

He had woken early that morning in a cage in West Berlin. Not one of the public cages, thank Merlin, but a private cage at the home of a fellow agent who Remus had never met. Certainly, though, the agent was well-off enough that they could have such an expansive attic in the middle of such a highly-strung city. There had been other oddities in the attic, marble busts atop antique cabinets and cardboard boxes packed tight with empty frames and blank canvases. Remus’ immediate superiors had deemed it unsuitable for him to undergo the transformation in his own home, a bedsit in East Berlin for some years now, when he was due in West Berlin the following evening. Although he resented the imposition on his autonomy, they provided him with Wolfsbane as one of the perks of the job, so he could hardly dissent.

Remus’ rendez-vous was a short walk from the affluent townhouse, down an alleyway between blocks of flats with no front doors, only garbage cans and stale smoke in the air. It could’ve been anywhere in Remus’ neighbourhood, but it was tinged with surreality. This was more surreal than waking up in an attic with a sculpted bust of a handsome young man eyeing him louchely. Less that the KGB would consider partnering with the CIA in the shadow of the Curtain, more that James—

James was alive. Lily was alive.

Sirius was, unfortunately, alive.

“You’re late.” Sirius was half out of shadow, half lit up streetlight-yellow. His accent was verging on transatlantic after years of misuse. “Do the clocks run differently under communism?”

“I’m out of touch with the propaganda,” Remus said. “You tell me.”

“I guess you were playing tourist.”

The tourist, yes—the tourist in the corner of the cafe reading over case files. How did Sirius know he’d been in West Berlin all day? Unless…

“It was your house.”

Sirius shrugged. “They asked me to put up one of the KGB’s wolves for the night. What does it say that I didn’t ask questions? I only found out it was you I’d be meeting when they carried you in, sedated.”

“To think we’ve been so close by each other and we didn’t know it.”

Years of windows of opportunity. Special branch had the Trace on all of their agents, so Remus didn’t dare Apparate if he could help it. If he’d known it was walking distance, he would’ve killed Sirius Black as soon as he had the chance.

“Lily, too,” Sirius said. “She’s in your neck of the woods.”

“I know.” Remus had read the files; he wasn’t a fucking idiot. What he didn’t understand was why Sirius thought he had any license to say Lily’s name after what he’d done to her and James.

It was patience that had kept Remus in this job, in East Berlin for so many years. It was patience that would get him through this mission. Get Lily, get to James, get the weapon. Keep up the pretence that these would be spoils for the Americans to share, and then take them solely for the Russians. Betray Sirius like Sirius had betrayed all of them ten years ago.

“We shouldn’t discuss this on the street,” he said. “Is your house safe?”

“Safe as it was for you last night. Or do you doubt that too?”

Sirius had always been like this, pushing buttons until he found the one that broke the circuit. Remus bit his lip; he wouldn’t gratify Sirius with a win. “It’s my training to doubt, as it should be yours, given what you’ve been up to these last nine years.”

“Whatever you’ve heard,” Sirius said, “I can assure you, not a word of it is true.”

 

* * *

 

What Remus had heard was this:

“A Brit,” Minayev had said. “Surfaced in West Berlin around nine years ago—”

—which had raised Remus’ hackles, but not enough—

“—and quickly made a name for himself as a con artist. He perfected the magic around art forgery and he knew the art of a deal intimately. In no time at all he was notorious. His only mistake was crossing the Atlantic, peddling his wares in America. The CIA were fast, and pounced on him with a deal: either he spent the rest of his life in a federal prison, or he turned informant and worked for them.”

“So he turned.”

“Not quite. At first he chose prison, but finding the security in Alcatraz significantly tighter than in Azkaban, it was not long before he agreed to work for them.”

That should have been a clue, too.

“Most of his work was in America, counterintelligence in the few magical communes that remained active beyond the sixties. Our intelligence suggests that he’s been doing much of the same in different parts of Western Europe for the last two years. West Berlin, at the moment.”

“He seems an unlikely candidate. Why exactly do we need to collaborate with the Americans to pull this off?”

“Your connection to the Potters alone is not enough.”

At this, Minayev had grinned, which ought to have given Remus the final push he needed to work it out. That if James was alive, and Lily was alive, then—

“The agent’s name is Sirius Black. I believe you knew him.”

 

* * *

 

“Did you work it out?” Sirius asked.

“I had no idea until my briefing,” Remus said honestly. “I suppose I never told you any of this at the time; Dumbledore wouldn’t have let me. A week before the—incident, I left on a mission, to work with a werewolf commune outside Moscow. By the time the news reached me there was nothing I could do.”

By then, Sirius was already in Azkaban, for however long that lasted.

“So you stayed.”

“Please. Tell me you were given intel on me before we met.”

“None,” Sirius said. “Word is there’s a whole department of wolves within the KGB. I didn’t for a moment know you’d be one of them until last night.”

“And you didn’t think that—given we were going to find Lily and James—”

Sirius smiled, flinched, flickered back to neutral. “I had spent nine years trying very hard not to think about you.”

For a moment he was twenty-one again, that easy smile and absolute candour; nobody had ever taught him how to guard his emotions. Then the spy was back, thirty years old but not so far removed from the boy Remus had once thought he’d loved, because Remus had loved anyone who showed him the bare minimum of respect at that age. Sirius the spy leant against the counter of his kitchen, a picture of domesticity in a knitted jumper of the same fading orange of the floor tiles. A cup of hot tea in his hands, steam rising to obscure his face, Remus could pretend if he wanted that this was Abelard’s flat in London. Age and adventure had not dared to lay a finger on Sirius’ good looks, but Remus would not let himself pretend.

“Well? Are you going to tell me how you wound up here?”

“There’s precious little to tell. I was with the wolves already. I was recruited.”

What Remus omitted was this: that there was precious little else for a gay Jewish werewolf stranded in Moscow with no money to his name and no way—no desire—to get home. This was his father’s country, the city Lyall Lupin had been born in, and it wasn’t long before a recruiter found the connection, found all the weaknesses, and used them to keep Remus on their side. It was a familiar procedure—after some years, Remus had been allowed to recruit, too.

“And you didn’t once think—”

“I thought you were in Azkaban. Do you want me to go on?”

Sirius shook his head.

Remus wondered if Sirius would bother to lie about it. Did Sirius even know that Remus knew about his role in what had happened that night? After all, Remus had been miles away. Either way it was clear that Sirius held no remorse. Perhaps he never thought about it. Perhaps now that they knew James was alive and working for Voldemort, Sirius had decided the time for remorse was over.

“We should focus on the mission,” Sirius said, setting aside his cup of tea next to the sink. “Go through what we know.”

“He Who Must Not Be Named is developing a weapon, so we get to the weapon and destroy it, before anyone can have that kind of power.”

“You’ve heard they say James has been helping him.”

Remus nodded. “That’s why these need us. Imperius curse, do you think?”

“That’s what I thought too. There’s no way James would do this of his own accord. Remember that time when we snuck into the Slytherin dorms and…” Sirius trailed off, his smile fading. “Anyway. It would have to be a damn strong Imperius. We used to practise on each other, you know, while you were off on your missions. James had a will of iron. The idea is that we use our history and—we use Lily—to bring him back.”

“And Harry?” Remus said. “Do you think either of them have him?”

Sirius shook his head, knuckles whitening against the edge of the sink, peeling formica over damp chipboard. This house had been put together in a hurry, a halfway home for an agent on the move. Remus had lived in places like this. A few minutes and you had already overstayed your welcome. When you were running away from something, or even from a ponderous nothing, you couldn’t afford to stay in one place for long. Lily was in East Berlin—how long had she been running before she ended up there? Of course, it would’ve been easier for her to escape without a child to protect as well as herself.

Naively, Remus had once thought that he would die during the war. Now he knew that the opposite was always going to be true: he would outlast it all, haunted by the ghosts of everyone who had done more than him, died younger than him. Peter, collateral when atomic Sirius detonated at last. Harry Potter, an infant caught in the middle of it all. James, who was brilliant, but how long before Voldemort saw no more use for him? And what if it had already happened, and all of this was fruitless?

They had to hope. That was all there was.

“Let’s sleep,” he said. “We can find Lily tomorrow morning.”

Find, not search for—they _would_ find her. Remus hadn’t spoken English in so long that he chose his words very carefully.

“Then we use her,” Sirius said grimly.

“We ask her to help us,” Remus said. Linguistic vagaries covered for a multitude of sins. “She’ll want to, when she knows what we know.”

Sirius fixed Remus with a stubborn glare. “When she knows what we _want_ her to know. We tell her we’re using her, Remus. We tell her exactly what we’re planning and we give her the choice. I’m sure your handler told you the same as mine—we don’t need Lily. We need her to get to Snape, who can get us to the Malfoys.”

Nine years ago, Sirius had known Remus as a kind of spy, someone who had never known anything other than a drowning need to distort the truth. Even now Sirius knew exactly when Remus was turning tricks with words, massaging the worst into something palatable. Remus was almost relieved to be called out on it.

“Fine,” Remus said. “We don’t need her, so we tell her the truth. And if it all goes tits up, you can be the one to Obliviate her.”

“Fine.”

They faced each other in the kitchen, an uneasy silence. A car went by outside, a siren in the distance, someone shouting in German downstairs. Remus looked between the wallpaper and the curtains and the bars on the open window, just to the left of Sirius’ head. Anything to avoid making eye contact.

“You can sleep in the cage again, if you want,” Sirius said. Remus was not looking, so he couldn’t say whether or not it was accompanied by a smirk.

“Respectfully, I’ll decline. Do you have a sofa?”

“I’ll do you one better. Spare bedroom, upstairs on the left.”

“Thanks,” Remus said. He wasn’t sure.

 

* * *

 

Of all the places in the world where a dead woman might go to stay dead, you couldn’t pick anywhere better than East Berlin. The orange glow of predawn muddied the grey suburbs stacked with rows of identical plattenbau, and on the quiet streets everyone was dressed the same—you couldn’t find anyone here unless you knew exactly who you were looking for. Or you were a professional.

“There’s a rumour,” Sirius said, talking softly although there was no-one to overhear them, “that the KBG employs so many werewolves because you’re good at sniffing things out.”

“Is that why you’re the CIA’s dog, now?”

“Careful.”

“I don’t know,” Remus said. “Maybe we are better at it than other people. Or we’ve just been doing it longer.”

This was a Muggle neighbourhood on the other end of town to where Remus had been living, but it was not so far that he couldn’t have made the trip here, tracked her down. Lily’s flat was on the fourth floor of a block not unlike Remus’ own. Remus knew the layout almost by intuition, where he’d find staircases and which corners to turn. He wished Sirius weren’t here. Sirius in his flashy coat was so evidently a stranger to these parts; Remus the local would get further without him hanging around.

Sirius raised his hand to knock on Lily’s door. He paused, laughing. “I have to remind myself not to call her Evans.”

“It would certainly be a bad idea to stay here with such a Western name. Potter’s out of the question too.”

“Let’s hope she’s still Lily, then.”

He knocked. There was no telltale footfall from within the flat, no shouts of, “Just a second!”

“There’s no way she knows we’re coming,” Sirius said. It sounded like he was trying to reassure himself more than Remus.

Ever impatient, Sirius went to knock again, and Remus made a desperate grab at his forearm, pulling him back.

“Were you trained at all? Never knock twice—it draws too much attention.”

“For your information, I was not trained,” Sirius said, “unless you count being groomed in the Order.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say it like that.”

“That’s not what it was? We were children, Remus, child soldiers being raised to fight the last deadbeat generation’s war for them. And you know what, my _training_ never got me anywhere. So damn your rules, I’m going to knock and there’s nothing you can—”

The door next to Lily’s inched open. A wizened old woman peered out nervously through the crack. In German, she asked, “Are you English?”

“Yes,” Remus said. “I’m sorry for the noise.”

“I’m not the one you should be worried about.” The woman opened her door properly now. “Are you friends of Ms. Gensch?”

Remus and Sirius exchanged a look. It had to be Lily. An English woman living in this flat—it had to be her, or else their intel was wrong.

“Do you know if she’s in?” Sirius asked.

“At this time of day she’ll be at work already. She’s a mechanic—the garage is a fifteen minute walk from here, directly north along this road and then left at the third turn. You won’t miss it.”

“That’s early to go to work,” Remus mused, slipping back to English momentarily. He cleared his throat. In German, he added, “Er, thank you. You’ve been most kind.”

“But in the future,” Sirius said, “you shouldn’t go telling everyone you meet where to find your neighbours. You never know what kind of people will come looking for them.”

The woman shook her head. “I think after so many years she will be happy to hear her own language again.”

And, Remus thought, if she hadn’t been so trusting they might’ve given up by now. With the old woman’s directions, they set off back down the main road, through lingering gloom even as the sun rose and with it the shadows over the street began to recede.

The garage was tucked away beneath a brick archway, its doors open but no movement inside or any lights switched on. Remus was hesitant to barge in calling out Lily’s name; he didn’t want to frighten her, but he was sure the sight of him and Sirius would do so anyway. And Sirius was another matter—Lily would know, too, that he was the one who’d sold her and James to Voldemort, the one who’d got them all in this position in the first place. They were all worse off with Sirius here. This was Remus’ worst mission yet.

So of course Sirius barged in and called out, “Ist Frau Gensch hier? Lily Gensch?”

“You absolute idiot,” Remus said. Sirius stuck out his tongue.

The worst part was, it worked. A voice unmistakably Lily’s echoed from the back of the garage: “Wer möchte das wissen?” _Who wants to know?_

“A couple of old friends,” Sirius said, and Remus elbowed him so hard he stumbled sideways.

Through the dark of the garage, Remus could just make out movement behind the row of parked cars. Reflexively, he slipped his right hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around his wand. It was a Muggle neighbourhood, so no open carry, but it never hurt to be cautious.

He sensed the spell shooting through the air towards him before he saw it. Sirius must have too. They both ducked; Sirius recovered faster, jumping to his feet and hurling a shower of sparks into the garage. Fancy magic, nothing more, but if Remus were Lily he might’ve been suitably spooked.

Sirius shouted, “Don’t make me Stupefy you!”

“Right, because that’s really going to endear you to—”

A flash of red behind a car, another spell sent their way.

“Lily!” Remus called. “Lily, it’s us. It’s me—Remus.”

A ceasefire. Silence. Then, “Remus?”

 

 

 

Merlin, it was her. It was really her. Letting go of his wand, Remus rushed forward into the garage, darted between two cars, and there she was, crouching behind a Trabant Universal, both hands grasped around her wand and a look on her face like she couldn’t quite believe it either.

She sprang to her feet and wrapped her arms around Remus, pulling him into a tight hug. “I thought I’d never see you again. Any of you.”

“I’m here too, by the way,” Sirius said. He was leaning against the Trabant like a model in a magazine advert.

Remus clenched his jaw. He was working with Sirius and had no license to attack him for what he did, but Lily had no such convenient excuses. If it was him in her position, Remus reflected, he might have killed Sirius on the spot.

She did not. She embraced Sirius too, maybe pulling him in even closer—or that was just Remus’ imagination.

“You broke out of Azkaban,” she said, amazed.

“Some time ago,” Sirius said. “Sorry I didn’t look for you sooner.”

“I didn’t want to be found.” Lily stepped back and, in some kind of shock at her own displays of sentiment, put a deal more distance between them than she needed to. “I was so shocked to hear my name—I’ve been going by Liesel. What are you doing here? Why now, of all times?”

The real question was, why wasn’t she acting like Sirius had delivered her directly into Voldemort’s arms?

“It’s a long story,” Remus said. “Can we go somewhere private to talk?”

“I’m the only one here, for now,” Lily said. “I can put up some spells.”

She waved her wand, and Remus saw Sirius flinch visibly at the state it was in. Remus imagined that his breeding had caught up with him on the continent; a hint of America in his accent but his manners all the British upper classes. Remus wondered what Sirius was noticing about him, whether he’d changed at all.

Lily hadn’t—her looks had followed her age, a mature version of someone Remus used to know, but recognisable all the same. She reached up to her messy bun, held back by a grease-stained bandana, and slid her wand in between the loose-bound strands. They took to a back-room office and when Lily sat she bounced her leg beneath the desk the way she always used to. As they sat across from her, Remus realised that he was seeing these similarities because he was looking for them, for some sign that this really was Lily, alive. That he was allowed to hope that James might be alive as well.

“So what happened? How did you end up here?” Sirius asked. So much for telling her directly.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Remus said, “if it’s too much.”

Typical Lily, she ignored him. “That night… we had protective spells, but he got past them. We had our secret keeper—so much for _him_ …”

Remus chanced a glance at Sirius. He didn’t flinch. Could they have given the role to someone else at the eleventh hour?

“James told me to run,” Lily continued. “I didn’t even think to argue. He said we’d have more luck if we split up, so in turn I told him to take Harry. It was more likely Voldemort would come after me; James, from good pureblood stock, could be of use to him. I was disposable, so I imagined that he might dispose of me. I… made the wrong call.”

Leaning forward, Sirius said, “What if I told you James might still be alive?”

“Don’t give me false hope.”

“It feels false to me, too,” Remus said. “But… I never imagined that you might be alive, either. And here you are.”

Lily almost smiled. “Here I am.”

“Okay, enough sentimentality,” Sirius said, “let’s cut to the point. We didn’t track you down for a bit of chit-chat, a catch-up over coffee.”

“Coffee,” Remus said. “How American.”

“Yeah, I wondered about the accent,” Lily said.

“Guess it doesn’t work if I say that I’ve been working for agents unknown, then.” Sirius had the good grace to laugh at himself. “Lily, we’re going to find James. There’s a rumour he’s alive and working for Voldemort himself, helping him build a weapon. If there’s even one word in that sentence that’s true—we’re hoping it’s just the part where he’s alive—then we need to find out.”

Remus watched for any reaction. “It won’t be… simple.”

“It might be the opposite of simple,” Sirius said.

“But we were hoping you might help us anyway.”

“Alright,” Lily said.

Of all the strange things that had happened since Remus woke up in a cage in Sirius’ dive, this was by far the strangest. He had expected Lily to argue, to put up some kind of fight. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy. Then again, he thought, she must want to see James more than the two of them put together. If the last time she’d seen James, she’d left him with Harry… no, Remus couldn’t entertain that thought. He wouldn’t raise his hopes any higher than he’d already allowed them to float, unprofessionally uninhibited.

Sirius leant across the table; he looked eager, surprised as well. “That’s it? You’re in?”

Lily held out both of her hands. Almost like intuition, Remus knew to take one, and Sirius took the other.

“This is the best day I’ve had since I moved to this godforsaken city,” she said. “Of course I’m in.”

 

* * *

 

Lily was fascinated by Sirius’ West Berlin neighbourhood, and no matter how many times Remus told her not to stare, she stared. He wondered how long she’d been here. When she’d fled Godric’s Hollow, where had she gone first?

He didn’t ask her. There were more important items on their agenda.

They sat around Sirius’ table, steam from their tea rising and fogging the windows—shut tight, of course. There could be no room for error, no chance that anyone might overhear this conversation.

“So,” Lily said. “What’s the plan?”

“We have reason to believe that the Malfoys are harbouring Voldemort, somewhere in their villa on the south coast of France,” Sirius said. “I mentioned a weapon earlier. This could make things complicated. Lily—you’re our ticket in there.”

“So I’ll be acting,” Lily said.

“We’ll all be acting,” Remus said, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.

“We’ve got it all planned,” Sirius said. “The Malfoys might recognise me, disguised or otherwise, so I’ll be out and about the town, seeing what I can dig up. You and Remus will be wife and husband. He’ll be posing as a wealthy Russian pureblood, and you will be… yourself, but a little different. There’s a chance that you’ll be recognised too, so you’ll need plausible deniability. The problem is that they can’t know you’re there looking for James. If the Malfoys twig, it has to seem to them like it was their idea.”

Remus could pick it up from here. “We’ve heard that James’ progress on the weapon has stalled. If they think they can use you as an incentive…”

“You want to dangle me in front of them like bait on a fishhook.”

“Nothing so crude,” Remus said. “But effectively, yes.”

“It won’t be for long,” Sirius said. It was hideously unfair that, for all his talk of easing her into the idea, he was positioning himself as the good cop. “There’s an old friend of yours at the manor. I’m sure you remember Snivellus—”

“Severus,” Remus supplied.

“—Snape. He’s been staying at the villa for some time now. The idea is, you speak to him, get us an in, you and Remus do a little bit of acting so that you have an excuse to snoop around the place, and if any of them recognise, you play dumb.”

“My persona,” Sirius said, placing a file on the table. Remus noted that it had been scrubbed of any CIA identifiers. “Dick Branigan, expert in all things dark and crusty. Imagine an American Borgin and Burkes. I’m sure such a thing does exist, but whoever they are, we’re pretending it’s me. I won’t be going near the Malfoys—I’ll poke around the town, put my name about as a dealer, see if anyone turns themselves in.”

“Never would’ve taken you as a grass,” Lily said.

Sirius only looked fleetingly uncomfortable. “I wasn’t, for a while. Anyway, if I have people grassing on the Malfoys, is it really grassing?”

“I suppose not,” Lily said. “Sorry. Go on.”

“Oh, I was about done. Remus?”

“That brings us to… us.” He smiled awkwardly at Lily, and she patted his hand. “It wasn’t my idea that we should pretend to be married. If people are looking out for a widow, then this way you’ll fly under the radar.”

“I’ve done worse to keep my identity secret,” Lily said. She didn’t ask whose idea it was. “So who am I?”

“Liesel Gensch, born and raised in East Berlin. You’ll keep the pseudonym you’ve been using, for simplicity’s sake. You can even be a mechanic, if you want. The idea, though, is that you remain as unassuming as possible. If the Malfoys put two and two together, we don’t want it to be easy for them.”

Lily nodded. “So they’ll ostensibly be more interested in you.”

“Right. Ilya Prokofiev. It’s an identity I’ve assumed on several occasions in the past, a reclusive Russian pureblood with a great fortune to his name. No-one from the Prokofiev family is known to appear much in public, preferring to live a shadowy life.”

“Let me guess,” Sirius said, “they pop up when the Russian Ministry needs a pronouncement from its establishment, and maybe to cut the ribbon on a new building, but otherwise live sequestered away from society in their unplottable mansion in the middle of Siberia. Am I correct?”

“Yes, the Prokofiev family doesn’t really exist. Well done.”

“That’s a classic KGB move.”

“Oh, and who taught you that? All your years in the field, or your bosses at the—”

Remus paused. Lily was staring at them, her mouth hanging slightly open.

“The _KGB_? Remus, what the fuck?”

He thought about being defensive, or even sensible, about this. Instead, what left his mouth was, “What, like it’s any better than Mister CIA over there?”

“I knew—I gathered you were working for someone, but I never imagined—”

“You have to understand,” Sirius said, suddenly solicitous, “in our situations, after the war, there was nowhere we could go. Certainly not back to Britain.”

“Don’t speak for me,” Remus said. He softened. “It was a similar situation, though. I was stuck in Russia, and I thought everyone I cared about was dead or in prison.” And because this entire conversation was like pouring oil on a fire, he added, “Speaking of prison, Sirius, how was your stint in Azkaban? Does Lily know what you did to get thrown in there?”

Abruptly, Sirius stood up from the table. “Do _you_ know what I did?”

“I should be leaving,” Lily said, standing too. “Knowing who you work for, I… need to think about this.”

Remus took his time joining them. “It’s true we have our allegiances, and it’s true we ought to have told you sooner, but this—this, we’re not doing because of where we’ve been over the last nine years. This is new information. I’m a career spy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be selfish. We want to see James again. We want you to see James again.”

Which was not quite the truth, but with any luck Lily would never discover that.

She nodded. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll decide where to go from there.”

“Get home safely,” Sirius said. “Don’t let anyone follow you.”

“Who are you, my mum?” Lily stuck out her tongue. “I’ll be fine.”

She would be—the KGB were tailing her every move, and the CIA too for all Remus knew. Nothing would happen to Lily Evans under their watch, and if she veered too close to danger, she would never know it.

Once she was gone, Sirius made to leave the dining room, but Remus was fast and caught him by the arm before he could get too far. “Who was their secret keeper, Sirius?”

“I don’t know.” Sirius must have seen that Remus was dissatisfied with that answer, so he repeated himself, louder: “I don’t know! I thought… I had an idea of who it might’ve been, but before I had time to work it out I’d been framed.”

“Peter,” Remus said. “Tell me it wasn’t Peter.”

“I don’t know,” Sirius said again. He changed the subject fast: “You lied to her about our… motivations.”

“So did you. And I never said I wouldn’t lie. It was you who said you’d tell her the truth.”

“Alright, I sugarcoated it,” Sirius snapped. “You didn’t want to tell her and—fuck, Remus, it’s _Lily_. It’s really her. Could you have honestly looked her in the eye and told her we were just using her?”

“I don’t think we are using her anymore,” Remus said. “I think that when I told her it was selfish, I was beginning to mean it.”

They stood in silence for too long, looking each other in the eye in a childish staring contest, waiting to see who would fold first. Blinking was no matter, so long as their gazes never faltered. But of course, they were both trained for this, and neither of them would falter. They would stand here all night if they had to.

At last, Sirius spoke. “I think so, too,” he said. “And that scares me.”

 

* * *

 

What were mornings for, if not for regretting everything you did the night before? Remus counted every morning he could remember the night before as a success; when he was the wolf, he lost his mind, and other nights he lost it anyway despite his body staying stubbornly the same. It was a terrible imposition. He treasured every lucid morning, those moments of realisation that he knew where he was, and he was still there, still there.

Waking up in the spare bedroom of Sirius’ dive was no less disorienting than it had been the first time, or than it had been when it was a cage in an attic, but this time it took less time for Remus to find the familiarity in this form and adjust accordingly.

He heard voices from downstairs.

Dressed and presentable, Remus waited on the stairwell while Sirius and Lily spoke in the kitchen, loud enough that his spy instincts allowed him to eavesdrop without guilt.

“It’s still surreal for me,” Lily said. “I’ve had to think over a lot of things these past twenty-four hours. You and Remus—I knew you were alive and out there somewhere, but I didn’t dare hope you’d cross my path. I thought I’d be alone in East Berlin forever.”

“And what about—”

“I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t want to know.”

Was it Harry they were talking about, or someone else? Really, it could mean absolutely anything, but if it wasn’t Harry—Remus wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t have an inkling of the implications. He bit his lip. This didn’t mean Sirius was suddenly innocent.

“I didn’t come here to dwell on the past,” Lily continued. “I’ve come to a decision about your _mission_.”

“Tell me you’ll come,” Sirius said.

“I don’t like the idea that I’m working with you when you’re working for foreign powers. I know you said that this is just you and Remus, doing this of your own will, but you’re only one step away from getting the agencies involved. You can understand why I don’t want that.”

“Of course. This isn’t some clinical assignment handed out to us on dossiers and organised behind closed doors—”

Remus bit down on his fingertips.

“—but something we’re doing for ourselves, because we want to. And we want you to help us, yes, but we want you and James back in our lives”

So much for telling the truth. As if their lives could ever go back to how they’d been before the war. Sirius had these lofty ideals, which Remus supposed was what came of buying into the American Dream. Remus still felt some residual affection for his old friends—a lot of affection, when the mood overcame him—but that did nothing to negate the fact that his life was in the hands of the KGB. The only certainty he knew was that he had to complete his mission. He had to get the weapon.

“I know,” Lily said. “And for that, I’ll join you.”

Remus chose this point to come out of hiding, make his way down the stairs. Sirius could see him coming, but Lily had her back to him.

“Thank you,” Remus said. “It means the world to us.”

Lily turned around to smile at him, and Remus’ chest constricted with the heaviness of a lie. He shrugged it off.

“As a matter of fact, I’d already made up my mind last night.” Lily smiled, her eyes narrowing wickedly. “I wrote to Severus to inform him of my impending arrival, with my husband Ilya Prokofiev.”

“Impressive,” Sirius said. “That’s the kind of thinking we’d expect from a seasoned agent. Right, Remus?”

Remus held out a hand. “Welcome aboard, Lily. You’ll fit right in.”

 

* * *

 

Minayev was waiting in the dappled shade of a tree, hat pulled low over his eyes. Remus, too, wore a hat, although he was certain he hadn’t been followed to the park. There had been one suspicious person lingering behind him on the walk, who had come out of a car parked nearby—a foolish move in broad daylight, and Remus had easily given them the slip. If the Americans wanted to know where he was going, they could ask Sirius. Remus had told him he needed a stiff drink. Alone.

This was not entirely a falsehood. Minayev extended a hand to Remus, holding out his customary hip flask. “You look like you need it.”

“I’ve made contact with the American,” Remus said. He didn’t move to take the flask, and Minayev let his hand drop. “And we’ve made contact with the dead woman.”

“Excellent work. Then the plan is in motion. Any word of the dead man and the weapon?”

“No. No word. The dead woman is as shocked as we were that he’s alive.”

Minayev raised an eyebrow. “We? Don’t tell me you’re close to the American already.”

Remus was momentarily at a loss for words. Sirius betrayed him—probably, probably not, but it was easier to believe that—Sirius was still his enemy.

“We were very close, very long ago,” he said. “Some habits never leave you. It’s helpful; he thinks I’m on his side.”

“Keep it that way.” Minayev held out his flask again. “You’d better have a swig. We don’t want the American to twig that you haven’t been drinking. He is astute, you know.”

Of course they’d bugged Sirius’ place. Remus hadn’t said anything too embarrassing, but equally, there was no need for Minayev to have asked if he was getting close to the American. It was an inevitability, almost, that this would be the case for two people with such a tapestry of history between them.

“Drink,” Minayev insisted.

“I suppose I have no choice.” Remus took the flask and downed the lot of it in one go. If it went straight to his head, then so be it. He could operate just as well under the influence.

Minayev patted his arm. It was a habit of his, an avuncular affectation to disguise the fact that Remus had no choice, again, but to be here.

A sway to his step, Remus walked back through the quiet streets to where Sirius and Lily were waiting for him. They must have thought it was so good of Remus to be doing this. To rescue James—but the truth of it was that James’ survival had nothing to do with Remus’ mission. His oldest friend was a means to an end. Wasn’t that just delightful?

Back at the house, Sirius was packing up all his effects. The house would fall to another American. Or it would be torched. Sirius was in the kitchen, putting his mugs in a box.

“Never the same city twice,” Remus said.

Sirius flashed him a smile. “I already broke that rule. Lily’s heard back from our old nemesis, so if all goes well we’ll have a way in. France sounds nice, doesn’t it? Maybe I’ll settle there next.”

“As if they’d let you choose.”

“I wouldn’t choose some beautiful seaside town, anyway,” Sirius said. “Maybe for a holiday. But I left my heart in London.” He paused, sizing Remus up. “I didn’t think you’d really drink in the middle of the day. You’re pissed.”

“Terribly so,” Remus said. He wasn’t. The affectation was easier than the truth. “Is it any wonder? I’m sick of this city.”

“I’m sick of the lot of it,” Sirius said. “Still. We do what we must.”

Remus turned to leave, but thought the better of it. He stopped in the doorway, his back to Sirius. “Only a few more hours. Good riddance to this bloody city.”

And if the Russians heard that—their hands were tied, too. Remus was their problem as much as they were his. It was much harder to assassinate a wizard than a regular Muggle agent. You couldn’t cut your secrets loose when they had the means to retaliate. The most fun Remus could have was this, whispers of transgression and a momentary connection shared with his enemy.

Remus wasn’t even sure of that.


	2. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, the translations of the phrases in German and French are in the end notes, or you can hover over them on desktop.

 

The hotel in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat was a neoclassical eyesore in the upmarket Mediterranean town. At the end of a street smelling of the sea breeze, the pastel-pink and terracotta orange shop fronts parted for a white modernist monolith, shaded by stone pines, palm trees, and bougainvilleas. Its front steps were dotted with footmen leading up to a set of glass revolving doors, and one side entrance for luggage.

Sirius would insist on taking the central revolving doors, of course. He couldn’t make an entrance without making an entrance. Remus and Lily were arriving at the same time as Sirius—pure coincidence to any onlooker, and a matter of convenience for the three of them—and as porters carried their luggage up the steps, Remus kept one eye on Sirius demanding the star treatment. He knew that he couldn’t be seen looking, but he rather thought there was no-one looking his way in the first place; he was unassuming, even in the fine robes that had been provided to him.

The lobby was as opulent as the exterior. It was certainly the kind of hotel where Ilya Prokofiev, pureblood socialite, would have stayed. But Ilya Prokofiev was not real, and the man pretending to be him, Remus Lupin, was only half-Russian, and not at all a socialite. He had sobered up from his midday indiscretion. Now all he had to do was play his part.

“Good day, Monsieur Prokofiev,” said the receptionist in perfect tourist-ready English. “We’ve been expecting you, of course.”

“Thank you,” Remus said, “and where will I be staying?”

The receptionist smiled obligingly.  “We have prepared the presidential suite for yourself and your…”

“My wife,” Remus said. “Liesel Gensch.”

At the other end of the desk, Sirius, acting the loud American, was getting a very frosty reception from another member of staff. Remus suspected that were it not for his prestige, he would be receiving quite the different welcome.

Remus forced himself to look away; Lily gave him a warm smile. He tried to let it give him strength, he really did.

“If you will follow our porter, your bags will be taken up to your suite. We hope you enjoy your stay!”

Remus noticed that Sirius was not being treated to a porter for this leg of the journey. Amazing the difference his new money looks made.

The presidential suite was on the very top floor of the hotel, overlooking the street and out across to the ocean. Remus went straight for the balcony. There were numerous grand houses and villas between the hotel and the shore, but of them none loomed larger than le Manoir des Malefoy. Remus knew it must’ve been the Manoir from the shape of the largest building, twisted like a snake in the shape of the letter S, with the other buildings clustered around it like oddly-shaped pebbles in a dangerous garden.

Lily joined him out in the fresh air. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Almost makes me forget what we’re here to do.”

“That sounds pleasant,” Remus said. “I’d advise against repeating that sentiment inside the suite, by the way. It may well be bugged.”

“There’s no spell for that yet, is there? The Muggles are much better at this sort of thing.”

“Yes, I suppose they are. Still, it’s not unthinkable that the establishment might have a place fitted with Muggle technology, in a fit of desperation.”

“And if there were ever a time for desperation…”

They went back into the room silently, and set about checking for traces of magic—none, mercifully—setting up protective spells, and sweeping for bugs. There were bugs, but none seemed distinctly magical to Remus. They were the kind of bugs the CIA put about in places where they knew there’d be a Russian. Remus was used to it. Nifty bits of Muggle tech, but easily jammed with magic. He still crushed the bugs beneath his shoes when he was done with them; it looked better if the Muggles in charge thought they had been disposed of the traditional way.

A shame, really. These shoes were much nicer than Remus was used to, and he was loathe to ruin the soles.

Once he was done, he stopped to really take in the room. The decoration was bordering on Rococo, but not overwhelmingly enough to be offensive. There was the odd piece of heavy-handed minimalism among the furniture, as though someone had decided that they would fit out the most expensive hotel with the most expensive chairs and be done with it, giving no thought to cohesion. Remus quite liked it.

“Well,” Lily said, “I hope you don’t mind sharing the bed.”

A double bed, bedecked with silk sheets and so many cushions that there was little room to sleep. “Oh, no,” Remus said, “I’ll take the couch. Or perhaps the chaise longue? There are a great deal more chairs in this room than beds.”

“I guess they didn’t make it with the president’s mistress in mind,” Lily said. “I don’t mind sharing if you don’t. It’s wide enough for both of us.”

“Well, if you—”

There was a banging knock at the door, and an American accent: “Damnit, Prokofiev, I’m losing my mind out here.”

Remus and Lily shared a look. “I’ll get it,” he said.

Sirius was clutching a clutter of defunct bugs in one hand. “Your lot,” he said. “I swear to Merlin.”

“We had some little gifts from your people, too, so I’m willing to call it even. Are you going to stand there complaining or are you coming in?”

“I’m coming in,” Sirius said, slipping back to his normal accent. “Fucking look at this place. You’re living in luxury. I’ve got a room like Filch’s closet.”

“Poor thing.”

“I’ll take your room, if you want,” Lily offered. “You and Remus can share this one.”

Remus shook his head. “I think that would be singularly unwise. Besides, it might be good for Dick Branigan to learn some humility.”

“Ha fucking ha. What kind of houses do you think I’ve been living in these past few years?”

“Nicer ones than mine, I’m certain,” Remus said. “You can’t be in here for long, Sirius—it’s the image of it. So let’s go over our plans for tomorrow.”

“What’s the word from Snivellus?” Sirius asked Lily.

Remus gave him a look. “From _Severus_. Death Eater or otherwise, we’re not in school.”

Sirius made a great show of rolling his eyes. “Not as though I’m going to come into contact with him. I can make fun of that toerag as much as I like.”

“Anyway, he seems willing to play double agent,” Lily said, “which is a stroke of good luck we need to take advantage of. He’s putting about word that Ilya Prokofiev is in town—he has no idea who you are, don’t worry. Seemed a little surprised that I was ‘remarried,’ actually. But never mind that. With any luck, there’ll be an owl from the Malfoys shortly, an invitation for Ilya and his wife to a soirée. No personal flourish, of course, but they’ll want to be seen with a Prokofiev, if the Prokofievs are really as elusive as you intend them to be.”

“I never thought I’d say this,” Remus said, “but I’m glad we have Snape on our side.”

Sirius, on the other hand, looked a little wistful. “Damn, a soirée at the Malfoys’. I used to go to those bloody garden parties all the time, before I was sorted into Gryffindor and became a public embarrassment to my family.”

“Don’t tell me you miss it,” Remus said.

“Not as such,” Sirius said, “but there’s a perverse part of me that’d give anything to be there with you.”

“You will do nothing of the sort.”

“I know, I know, but—”

“No _buts_ ,” Remus said, and Lily gave him an amused smile, which he chose to ignore. This was not a game. “If anyone recognises you… no, your time will be best used otherwise.”

“This whole mission is a real test of my patience.” Sirius looked alarmed a second later, glanced at Lily, and said, “I mean—it’s not really an official mission, but you know what I mean.”

“I know,” Lily said.

That they had her fooled—it left a foul taste in Remus’ mouth. He wondered if it would ever be easier; if Sirius found it any easier, even though he hadn’t been doing this for as long as Remus.

Sirius left, but the atmosphere remained. Lily, clearly overwhelmed, lay down for a late afternoon siesta, and Remus repaired to the balcony with a book, the fresh air blowing about him and the sun sinking on the horizon, painting the sky the colour of the buildings in town.

Remus was not ten pages into his book when the owl from Manoir des Malefoy arrived.

 

* * *

 

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat was every bit the exclusive destination. Remus was so detached from Muggle popular culture that he couldn’t have named a single one of the faces that passed him on the street, where he walked conspicuously arm-in-arm with Lily, but he could tell from how they dressed and how they carried themselves and how they whispered to each other that they were all exceptionally rich, and at least passingly famous.

These were the Muggles. The magical population of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat hid itself better. To famous Muggles, there was nothing so important as being seen; for wizards, the less you were seen the more important you surely had to be. So Remus allowed his very important persona to be seen among the Muggles, and he left the exploration of the magical parts of town to Sirius. It was disappointing—Remus would have liked to pretend, for once, that he could enjoy himself on a mission. Instead he was cooped up back in the hotel on the sofa with his book and Lily on one of the other sofas with her book and nothing to do but wait.

Sirius came back at last late in the afternoon. His cheeks were flushed the colour of the setting sun and it was clear he’d been shopping; there were marks from bag handles still digging into his fingers, although clearly he had more delicacy than to bring his spoils to Remus and Lily’s room.

“How did you find it?” Remus asked. “Or perhaps I should ask, what did you see of our people in this town?”

“There’s a large community, if you know where to look,” Sirius said. “You get a whiff of it and you turn a corner and suddenly you’re in the Quartier Magique. Word is there’s even a magical island just south of the coast; Île des Sortilèges. But nobody seems to live there, or know anybody who does.”

“Magician’s Island.” Remus snorted. “Creative. Sounds like something a Muggle came up with.”

“Yeah, it smacks of urban legend.”

“And what of the demographic?” Lily asked.

“What you’d expect,” Sirius said. “Most of them wealthy pureblood types, holidaying somewhere far from any sort of responsibility. Lots of servants—house elves, but people too. Squibs, I presume.”

“How ghastly,” Lily said. “And no word of… ?”

“James? No.” Sirius shook his head. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t ask explicitly, of course, but I did my best to listen. Mostly, everyone was talking about the shindig at the Manoir tonight. I even got a couple of invitations—people said the Malfoys would be interested in dealing with someone like me—but I—”

“You are _not_ going,” Remus said.

“Don’t worry,” Sirius said, a little testily, “I have no intention of going, and I was _going_ to say that I’d told them as such, if you’d let me finish.”

“Well, don’t beat yourself up over not finding out anything about James,” Remus said, rolling his eyes for good measure.

He caught Lily giving both of them a fed-up look; not for the first time, Remus wondered what she knew that made her hate Sirius so much less than his instincts were telling him to. If she were in his position, he was confident that she would be just as frustrated to be stuck working with Sirius on a mission this important.

And yet—who else could it be? Who but Sirius? Remus sat back and watched him ramble about the town, the shops he’d visited, the famous Muggles he’d spotted, who he and Lily cooed over.

Remus interrupted at last: “As fascinating as this is, Liesel and Ilya ought to get ready for their outing tonight.”

“Yeah, of course,” Sirius said, getting to his feet. “I’ll just… go back to my room…”

“And wait patiently for us to return, as we did all afternoon.”

Remus stared Sirius down, waiting for him to try to argue with that. He didn’t; Sirius skulked off like a wounded dog. Remus wouldn’t admit it to Lily, but he was significantly more relaxed without Sirius around. He didn’t have to keep thinking about their past, and what the hell they were doing working together, and how, ultimately, he’d have to betray Sirius in the end, taking the weapon for the KGB’s ends. It hadn’t been hard for Sirius to betray James and Lily, but… had he? With that thrown into doubt, Remus was less certain about his own goal.

But he couldn’t think about it. He had been trained not to think about it, and so he did not.

He put on his finest dress robes—not his own, of course—cloth of fine purple fringed with red and gold draped over his scarred shoulders. He holstered his wand discreetly, after performing straightening spells on his hair and putting a glamour over his features to make himself seem less war-wearied and more like a wizard who lived a life of leisure. If anyone detected his glamour, that would be fine; purebloods were always making themselves out to be prettier than they really were.

Lily did not have to do anything to her face to make her look impeccable. She affected a slight German accent when she spoke English, or maybe she didn’t have to try so hard, and tied her hair up in a sweeping up-do. This was the wife of an elusive Russian millionaire—Remus felt inadequate stepping out beside her. He did not think it would be wise to mention it.

Remus held out his arm, and Lily took it. They Apparated directly to the front entrance of the Manoir. From here, they couldn’t see the serpentine buildings and lavish gardens, just tall wrought-iron gates protruding from vine-covered walls. Beyond, there were hedges, perfectly trimmed, and peacocks roaming the grounds among flawless topiary made in their image.

A glassy-eyed guard stood sentry at the gate. “Name?” he asked robotically.

“Ilya Prokofiev, and my wife Liesel Gensch.”

The guard—an Imperiused squib, best case scenario—read through a list of names, and nodded. “You may enter.”

His words must have triggered a spell, because the heavy gates swung open, creaking and crackling as they swept across the gravel. There were small lights bobbing in the air, marking the path through the front gardens to the area where the party was being held. Now that he was inside, Remus could hear the faint hum of music and chatter beyond the high hedges.

“Ready?” Lily asked him. “I couldn’t honestly say that I am.”

“This is my job,” Remus said. He was not ready.

The hedge maze opened up onto a large outdoor ballroom, more floating lights overhead. The whole place hummed with magic—if you wanted to hide the most dangerous wizard of the last fifty years, this would be the ideal cover.

Their host was at the edge of the crowd; not either of the Malfoys, but Severus Snape, the real reason Remus and Lily had made it here. Lily surreptitiously waved in his direction, and Snape ambled over, a sneer on his face. Remus swallowed—he hoped to hell his glamour was holding up. It didn’t matter that he’d done it hundreds of times before. It had never counted so much as it did now.

“Miss Gensch,” Snape said. “Or is it Prokofiev, now?”

“Only a tyrant would make his wife take his name in this day and age,” Remus said, frowning like he expected better of Snape, although he most certainly did not—in fact, given their history, he actively expected worse. And, because he was getting into character, he raised an eyebrow. “Who are you to cast aspersions?”

“Severus Snape. Liesel and I are… old friends. It’s down to me that you were even invited to this soirée, although once I informed them that you were in town, naturally the Malfoys were falling over themselves to have someone of your _prestige_ in their presence.”

“I am flattered,” Remus said.

“How have you been, Severus?” Lily asked. “It’s been so many years.”

“Too many,” he said. “May I introduce you to the lady of the manor? Narcissa is simply dying to meet you.”

Lily put a hand to her chest. “Oh! I’d be delighted. I should like for Ilya to meet her, too.”

“Might I have a word with Ilya first?” Snape said. “I have a keen interest in Russian wizardry. I should like to pick his brains.”

Remus did his best to look down his nose at Snape. “You may, if you prove that you’re not wasting my time.”

Snape smiled cruelly, and turned to look over his shoulder. He must have caught Narcissa’s eye, because the next moment she was gliding over towards them in her robes of green, the same green as the topiary and the peacocks’ tail feathers. She was exquisite, thin-lipped and withdrawn, and she held out her arm to Lily as she approached. Her son—about the age Harry would’ve been, Remus realised with a start—trailed behind her, taciturn.

“And who is this beautiful guest of ours, Severus?”

“The lady I told you about,” Snape said. Remus didn’t like his tone. “Liesel Gensch, the wife of Ilya Prokofiev.”

Narcissa looked Remus up and down. “A Prokofiev—I needn’t say what a privilege it is to have you in attendance. Do you see, Draco? This man is from one of the great wizarding families of Russia.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Narcissa’s son said, in a tone indicating he had been taught to say this and only this, and had practised it to death.

“Thank you,” Remus said. “I have been made to feel very welcome. I will not forget this hospitality.”

“I wonder if I mightn’t monopolise some of your wife’s time,” Narcissa said. “Liesel, forgive me, but you do not look as though you come from the same echelons as the rest of us. Now that you are married into such a prestigious family… well, a husband is one thing, but it serves to have a fellow woman show you the ropes, does it not?”

“That would be most gracious of you,” Lily said.

“Oh, but your English is excellent,” Narcissa said. She held out her arm. “Come, come. Let me get you a drink.”

Lily shot Remus an amused glance as she was swept away, Narcissa’s sullen son trotting behind them; Remus was less than pleased, however, to be left standing with Snape, who he was beginning to suspect knew much more than he was letting on. And how much of that could he have told the Malfoys?

Snape confirmed Remus’ suspicions straight away. “Lupin,” he said, “how long has it been? Ten years? More?”

“You speak as though you’ve missed me,” Remus said.

“There’s no need to affect that accent around me.”

Remus scowled. “Forgive me, but this is not an affectation. I have spent near a decade on the continent; some days my Russian is better than my English.”

“Curious,” Snape said. “Then I can surmise why you’re here. And I could blow your cover in an instant. If you try anything around the Manoir, I will see to your swift exposure.”

“Yes, nobody’s ever tried to blackmail me before. Very original. I can tell you now you have nothing to worry about, Snape. You don’t need to try to guess why I’m here, because this needn’t concern you any further than it already has. There will be no trouble from me.”

“I’m sure that—”

They were cut off by a loud voice cutting through the crowd. A loud voice with an American accent. Remus suppressed a full-body shudder as he heard someone who he hoped like hell wasn’t Sirius Black say, “What’s a man got to do to get his hands on some hors d’oeuvres in a swanky joint like this?” Because if it was Sirius, Remus would have to hex him into the middle of next week, and nobody wanted that.

He turned around. It was Sirius, and he was so brazen that he wasn’t even wearing a disguise; just a very fetching pair of sunglasses, brand new by the looks of it.

“Did you know he would be here?” Snape hissed.

Stupid question—Remus wouldn’t say yes even if it were the truth. Which it was. “Of course not,” he said. “Bloody hell, do you think I would’ve come here if I’d known that…”

Something like understanding dawned on Snape’s face. “It was him, wasn’t it? He turned traitor on…” Snape jerked his head towards where Lily was standing with Narcissa, examining a topiary peacock.

“You would know,” Remus said, “being one of _his_ lot. If you’ll excuse me—I should leave, before Black sees me.”

“Of course.”

Sirius—what was bloody Sirius doing here? After Remus had warned him off, twice, and Sirius had promised he wouldn’t come, twice. Now he was making a scene. Had he taken the fallacy to heart, that the best disguise was in plain sight? Maybe Remus really would hex him.

While Sirius was pestering someone over the hors d’oeuvres, Remus found his way back to Lily. “Meine Liebe, es tut mir leid das ich störe,” he said, “aber der Fremde macht nur Ärger hinten.”

Lily looked momentarily shocked before switching back to neutral. “Ilya, English, please. We are not alone.”

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” Narcissa said. “I speak passable German. You don’t speak Russian to each other?”

“My Russian is terrible,” Lily said, laughing self-consciously. “You and your husband, do you speak in English or French?”

Narcissa smiled thinly. “It depends who we’re talking to. Lucius!”

Remus hadn’t noticed him close by; Lucius Malfoy swept over in robes the twin of his wife’s, but cut more conservatively. Remus only vaguely remembered him as one of the older Prefects when they’d both been at Hogwarts, five years apart, and he had grown into a stately, handsome man.

“Devrions-nous parler en anglais ou en français pour nos invités?” Narcissa asked him.

“Oh, let’s not be so continental,” Lucius said. “Prokofiev, is it? I’ve never met a Russian who’d willingly speak French.”

“Avez-vous déjà rencontré un russe?” Remus asked. “Well, I understand that you English are more comfortable in your own tongue. I have been most impressed by this soirée so far, Lucius.”

“I am glad to hear it. I’ve long held your family in esteem, Ilya, as fellow members of a, shall we say, higher caste. No doubt there is much we can learn from one another.”

Remus dipped his head respectfully. “I would be grateful for the opportunity.”

“Very well. You will join us for lunch tomorrow, one sharpish.”

“And my wife?” Remus said. “I should like Liesel to see your grounds. It is a rare opportunity.”

Lucius spared a brief glance for Lily. If he knew who she was, his look of recognition wasn’t distinguishable from the usual disdain he held for those below his station. “Yes, I suppose she may accompany you.”

“I will show Liesel about the grounds,” Narcissa said. “We are fast friends already, are we not?”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” Lucius said. He could not have made it sound more distasteful. “Perhaps we will give you both the grand tour. There are all sorts of wonders hidden about the Manoir, things you’ll find nowhere else in the world.”

Lucius said this to Remus, but it was clearly meant for Lily. Lucius must have known; Narcissa too. They would have recognised Lily’s face from her obituary, or heard from Snape. This was the plan, but it still unsettled Remus. Did they know who he was too? Did they suspect that the Prokofievs were less than met the eye?

“We would be delighted,” he said, and shook Lucius’ hand.

Either way—the deal was made.

 

* * *

 

Under the shade of a tree and a broad Disillusionment charm, outside someone’s home far enough from the Manoir that there was no chance of being overheard by anyone who mattered, Remus grabbed Sirius by the collar of his robes and shoved him up against the low stone wall bordering the property. Remus was not usually one for violence, nor did he intend to hurt Sirius, but every now and again he allowed himself to express his anger physically. Let people talk—in this moment, he was a wolf.

“What were you thinking? You almost blew my cover, never mind your own.”

Sirius, for his part, didn’t look too troubled by it. “Relax, Remus. Where’s your sense of fun?”

“Sense of fun? _Sense of fun_? For now, for this—” He looked over his shoulder at Lily, standing awkwardly at the other side of the street. “—you treat this like you would any other mission. There’s no _fun_ in work.”

“This is the Remus I remember,” Sirius said, smiling easily. “Always so prosaic. The Prefect, the goody-two-shoes—”

“I’m beginning to think you never grew up after all. This is a joke to you. Need I remind you that someone’s life is at stake? Someone we used to know?”

Sirius’ gaze drifted towards Lily, somewhere behind Remus, then he rolled his eyes back into his head. “Do you want to know what I did? While you were socialising? I spoke to Narcissa, and she didn’t recognise me.”

“Bullshit,” Remus said.

“Bullshit, what’s bullshit about it?”

“She and Lucius recognised Lily, I’m sure of it. And you have the gall to assume they didn’t recognise you?”

“Lily was in the newspapers,” Sirius said defensively. Remus had thought that too, but then, so was Sirius, when he’d broken out of Azkaban. “Anyway, I put about that I was looking to buy, and Narcissa seemed interested. She’d like to meet me later in the week. It’s not a matter of any urgency, so I don’t think she’s got designs grander than selling off a few musty vases.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Remus said. “Because I think this actually makes it worse.”

“That’s not all. She told me, in passing, that there’s a ‘vault full of treasures’ in the Manoir.”

“And you don’t think she could’ve been planting that information to lure you into a trap?”

“She didn’t give me a bloody map,” Sirius snapped. “Would you stop second-guessing everything for one moment? They have a vault. I bet you anything that’s where they’re keeping You-Know-Who.”

“And James,” Lily said.

Reluctantly, Remus loosened his hold on Sirius and turned to face Lily. “Even if that is the case, Sirius is right; we don’t know anything about the layout of the Manoir. We’ll be going there tomorrow, which will give us a window for reconnaissance, but other than that…”

“We need to spend more time,” Sirius said sourly. “We need to plan. Prosaic.”

“Boring, as most work tends to be. Our profession is much less exciting than everyone thinks it is.”

Sirius snorted. “I don’t know what job you’ve been doing. I’ll go back there tonight, if I have to. I want to find this damn vault and get this over with.”

“Sick of being Dick Branigan already?” Lily teased. “Sirius… maybe Remus is right. We have to wait and see how this is going to play out. Let’s all lie low tonight.”

“Fine,” Sirius said. “Fine! See if I care.”

Sirius stormed off ahead in the direction of the hotel. Remus slumped against the low wall, wiping his forehead. It was a warm night, and he had grown hot with anger. The sea breeze could only do so much. What was worse was that Lily kept her distance, regarding him with a certain wariness. Remus supposed that was his fault, too, for losing his temper.

“Sorry,” he said. “I… perhaps I was out of line.”

Lily shook her head. “We all feel strongly about this. A good night’s rest will clear our heads, wouldn’t you say?”

“Of course.” Remus stood again and approached Lily, holding out his arm. “Liesel—may I escort you back to the hotel?”

Keeping up appearances, to keep out of sight. The Malfoys may have had their hackles raised by Lily’s appearance in town, and by Sirius too. Doing nothing was the sensible thing to do. Lie low, don’t do anything drastic. Sensible. Prosaic. Which was why, Remus realised, he was going to do the opposite.

 

* * *

 

Remus waited until Lily was asleep in the double bed he was still refusing to share with her. He got dressed in the bathroom—Muggle clothes, practical trousers for sneaking about—and ducked out in the dark, to the fire stairs and three floors down. He found the room where Sirius was staying and knocked on the door, not too forcefully.

Sirius was wearing pyjamas and wide-eyed surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“Fancy a bit of an adventure?” Remus said. “I’ll show you my sense of fun.”

“We’re going to the Manoir,” Sirius realised, grinning.

“Got it in one. Put on something sensible and let’s go do something reckless.”

It was hard to sneak around in a resort town at night. The were lights on in every window along the main roads and there were parties behind every second door; Remus pretended he was a tourist, looking around at all the sights, absorbed momentarily in something other than the danger he was about to face. Then they reached their turn-off, and the streetlights faded until they were walking through suburban darkness under a waning moon and a sky dotted with stars.

“Bit of a walk,” Sirius said. “Still, I guess it wouldn’t do to Apparate.”

“We need to gain ground where we can,” Remus said, “and purebloods have a quite exceptional blind spot when it comes to people doing it the Muggle way. Walking—why would anyone waste their time with that? Why would anyone pick a lock when they could cast Alohomora?”

“And why would you bother to install security alarms when you could put up protective spells? It’s not like anyone’s going to just, I don’t know, climb over the walls.”

They paused, some dozens of metres away from the wrought iron gates to the Manoir grounds, still staffed by a solitary guard.

“You’re going to have to give me a leg up,” Remus said. “I can’t quite reach.”

“My pleasure.”

With Sirius’ help, Remus raised himself onto the top of the wall, and helped Sirius clamber up after him. They stayed there for a moment, looking out over the grounds ahead of them, sloping down the hillside, and the town behind them, palm trees and tiled roofs.

“It’s beautiful at night,” Remus whispered. “Don’t you think?”

Sirius nodded. “You alright to jump down on your own?”

“I’ve scaled higher walls than this,” Remus said.

He lowered himself over the edge slowly and landed gently on his feet. He was joined for half a second by a flailing bundle of fur, a large black dog which quickly returned to its human form, and Sirius squatted on his haunches, brushing a speck of imagined dust off his shoulder.

“Let’s do this,” Sirius said.

“That’s how you escaped,” Remus said, marvelling, as Sirius bounded ahead. “You turned into Padfoot and slipped out, because Dementors don’t have the same effect on animals.”

“Keep up,” was all Sirius said, and Remus couldn’t tell if he was referring to working it out or making their way through the gardens and towards the villa.

They had no plan for where to go once they were inside—or even how they would make it inside, unnoticed—but that was half the fun. It reminded Remus of being back at Hogwarts, roaming the castle at night and scratching the turn of every corner onto the parchment that would become their map. They were invincible, back then; it was remarkable how life had a way of veering so far off course.

The grounds of Manoir des Malefoy were no longer illuminated and they were desolate but for the peacocks. Remus and Sirius slipped through the hedge maze easily and past the open area where the soirée had been held, and to the front steps of the main building. There were no guards stationed here; perhaps the Malfoys didn’t think they’d need them. But neither was there any way to open the heavy front doors. Sirius was trying, throwing everything at it short of using his wand.

“This is futile,” Remus said. “And would they really keep their vault in the main building?”

“How about we get back up on the roof?” Sirius suggested. “Climb along the snake, get a better view of anything that sticks out around the grounds…”

“You’re insane.” Remus looked up at the distance from the ground to the roof, the number of window panes they’d have to climb past to make it up. “Let’s do it.”

Three storeys and aching joints later, there wasn’t much of an improvement to the view—neither of them had accounted for the trees dotted across the grounds, which seemed to block out all the most interesting corners, or maybe Remus only wanted to know what was behind those trees because there was something in the way. Still, Remus found was something uniquely invigorating about being up so high with nothing to keep him stable but his own wits. No-one in the buildings down below could possibly know they were up there, unless they had some way of monitoring it at all times. This was as close to invisible as you could get without magic.

The novelty wore thin soon enough. The only progress they made was inching closer to danger, but it was more likely that the vault of treasures Narcissa had mentioned was somewhere deep inside the grounds. Remus made the executive decision to climb down by a copse of trees ringing a squat building with all the lights out, the kind of place that might conceivably continue underground.

He and Sirius shared a look. On either side of the Curtain, they had been trained the same. This building raised the reddest of flags.

In silent agreement, they crept towards the building. It was not just that the lights were out—the windows were boarded shut. Another flag. There was an arc in the dirt where the door had recently been opened. Careful not to tread on it, Remus inched closer and pressed his ear to the door. Either there was magic to muffle any sounds, or it really was empty.

Well, they wouldn’t find out by standing around. Remus put his hand to the doorknob and gave it an experimental turn. _Locked_ , he mouthed, and Sirius nodded, readying his wand. As Remus pulled his hand away, the doorknob came into bright relief—someone had turned wandlight on them.

“Who’s there?” called a voice. It wasn’t one of the Malfoys; it must’ve been a member of the Manoir’s staff—or, Remus thought, a Death Eater, but he didn’t want to think about that possibility.

Remus closed his eyes, closed his fingers around his wand, and tried to Apparate. He could see Sirius doing the same, but nothing came of it. There was an anti-Apparition spell over the place. Sirius moved faster than Remus, bolting into the darkness. A second later, Remus followed. He couldn’t see where Sirius was going, but there was a clear line from this part of the grounds to what looked like part of the external wall. Remus went straight for it, aware that he was being followed by one person, maybe two.

A stunning spell shot past Remus’ shoulder. He veered sharply to avoid it, losing his footing and landing face-first on damp grass. He rolled sideways, but before he could get to his feet, there were two servants standing in front of him, wands out.

“Who are you?” one of them asked. “How did you get in here?”

They both had wandlight pointing directly at him. Remus held up a hand to cover his eyes. It was a clever tactic, essentially restricting his ability to aim. He heard voices in the distance. Unless he set off a spell that might catch himself too, he had no way to get out of this. Furious, blinking in the bright light, he got to his feet—Remus wasn’t finished with this mission.

He was about to start flinging Disarming spells in every direction—an easy, if careless, precaution—when a howl cut through the night. Remus panicked. It wasn’t the full moon, was it? It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it had only been days ago. And this was a dog’s howl. The next thing he knew the wandlights were off him and the servants were shouting. It was a black dog, and it ran circles around Remus, tilting its head in the direction of the walls.

Remus didn’t stop to thank Sirius for the second chance, because there would be no third. He ran.

Padfoot turned back into Sirius at the wall; the servants were far enough away that they wouldn’t have noticed. The climb felt harder this time. Remus’ limbs were leaden. He toppled from the height, and only realised halfway down that Sirius was holding onto him. He realised this because Sirius Disapparated, and then they were under the tree, some streets away, where they had argued earlier that day.

“Breathe, Remus,” Sirius said. This time it was he who had Remus backed against the wall. “Breathe.”

 

“I nearly died,” Remus said.

“I imagine you come near death a lot in your line of work. Steady, we need to walk back. Return the way you came, and all that.”

Remus was taller than Sirius, by a little. Now, all the wind knocked out of him, he looked up at Sirius, and he felt that this was the one time Sirius actually deserved it. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“Save it,” Sirius said, but he was smiling.

There was no way that this was the person who had betrayed James and Lily.

 

* * *

 

The hotel room was quiet but for the sound of their breathing, Remus’ heart beating against his chest and his back heaving against the door. Sirius was slumped on the bed. It wasn’t a terrible room, Remus thought. Sirius had been overstating it. The decor was much the same as in Remus and Lily’s room, but it was pokier. Not that Remus could really have told in the dark—until the room lit up with a pearly-white glow from the balcony, filtered and scattered through the curtains.

As Sirius opened the curtains, Remus already had a horrible feeling that he knew what he would see. It was a peahen Patronus, just one more light in a city that doggedly stayed awake long into the night.

“Mr. Branigan,” the peahen spoke, with Narcissa Malfoy’s voice. “It is with some urgency that I move our meeting to morning tea tomorrow. Meet me at Gaudet’s in the Quartier Magique at eleven. I have much I wish to discuss with you. Please send your reply via Patronus to confirm.”

Having delivered its message, the peahen flew off into the night.

“Tomorrow morning,” Remus said. “I’d almost say there’s something she wants to get out of the Manoir before Lily and I are there. You should go.”

Sirius shook his head. “I can’t reply to that. If she didn’t recognise my face, she’ll be able to connect my Patronus to the dog that attacked her staff, and then it’s only a matter of time.”

Remus thought so too, but not replying would imply that Sirius wasn’t there, which would potentially place him at the scene of the crime—this was a test. “She doesn’t know about Padfoot. You have to take the chance.”

“You’re right, but I’m not happy about it. It’s more suspicious if I don’t reply. We’ll just have to hope.”

Sirius produced a Patronus to carry his reply, although he didn’t perfect it right away. Remus did not mention that he hadn’t been able to produce a Patronus for nine years now. He had no memories happy enough. He understood that Sirius would be in much the same position.

At length, Sirius sent his message back to Narcissa, and then collapsed onto his bed. But Remus wasn’t going to let him sleep just yet.

“Thank you for what you did earlier,” he said. Sirius didn’t reply, so Remus went on: “You could have left me there to die. I suppose I thought you would.”

Inflamed, Sirius sat bolt upright. “You think I would do that to you, of all people? Remus, I know it’s been a long time, and we’re different people now, et cetera, but you’re one of the only people I’ve ever—loved, to be blunt. Frankly, I’m insulted that you think I’d—”

“You know what’s worse?” Remus interrupted. “I’ve spent these last years thinking even worse of you. I had no evidence to the contrary. That you were the traitor. I thought you killed James and Lily. I hated you.”

“I should have expected that. I _did_ expect it, but I suppose I hoped… well, you had no evidence… but either way…”

“Ever since we found Lily, I’ve suspected otherwise. She doesn’t treat you like her murderer. I wondered if she might have forgiven you, for—I don’t know—some twisted, personal reason I could never hope to understand, but then I overheard you the other morning back in Berlin. You spoke as though there was someone else involved.”

“Sit down,” Sirius said. “I owe you the full story.”

Remus sat. It was a narrow bed, so he sat as far from Sirius as he reasonably could; just this closeness made his heart stutter. _One of the only people I’ve ever loved_ —Remus wondered if Sirius knew it was mutual.

“Go on, then.”

Sirius shifted so that he was sitting against the headboard; it was evident that this story was a hard one for him to tell. “As far as anyone knew, I was their secret keeper. And I was, right up until a few days before it happened. But I was a target in my own right, and somehow I convinced myself that I was at the top of You-Know-Who’s hit list, that he would use my family to get to me and torture the secret out of me. In turn, I convinced James and Lily to confide in someone else.”

“Peter,” Remus guessed, again.

“I don’t know,” Sirius said, again, but he sounded less certain of it this time. “I assumed that whoever they’d confided in had given away the secret under duress, and then the likelihood was that they were dead. So I was going to skip town. I was cautious; I didn’t use any magic, booked a ticket under a fake name for a boat to France, headed to the pier… it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours when the Order caught up with me. Someone definitely framed me, because they must have been surveilling me, monitoring my bloody Muggle phone line. I fought them—Peter was there, and I—well, there was an explosion. I don’t know where it came from, but the next minute someone from the Order had me. They took me straight to the Aurors, and I wasn’t given a trial. They threw me straight in Azkaban.”

Disregarding all his caution, Remus moved closer, held out a hand. Sirius took it. “I’m sorry,” Remus said. “I don’t know what else I can say.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologise for,” Sirius said. Darkly, he added, “I hope like hell the secret keeper really did have the information tortured out of them. Because if it wasn’t Peter, I’d like to kill the bastard myself.”

“I don’t want to encourage your murderous fantasies,” Remus said, “but we’d suspected for months that there was a traitor in the Order. Even back then, I thought it was you, for a time, although I didn’t know anything about surveillance.”

Sirius laughed humourlessly. “I thought it was you. For some time after I still entertained that thought, given that you’d been abroad when it happened. You might’ve fled the scene of the crime, for all I knew.”

“You knew I was abroad, but you didn’t think to—”

“I tried to find you when I escaped from Azkaban,” Sirius snapped. “Don’t be like that. I went back to your old home, all your haunts, and eventually I went to Dumbledore, who told me you hadn’t been seen since a week before the murders.”

“He didn’t tell you he was the one who sent me away.” It was almost laughable; Remus did not laugh. “I’ll tell you now what I couldn’t tell you at the time: I went from being one man’s spy to another’s.”

“Maybe I guessed that, on some level,” Sirius said. “Maybe I did this so I could find you.”

“Nice try, but I was briefed on your background before the mission.”

Sirius shrugged. “Worth a shot. So am I forgiven?”

“No reason to forgive an innocent,” Remus said, and before he knew what he was doing he was leaning forward, and Sirius was leaning forward, and their lips brushed for a fraction of a second in a belated apology.

It it was a weight lifted from Remus’ chest. He no longer needed to doubt Sirius or his motivations, and he could trust that they both had the same desire to find James safe. Now it was what would happen after their mission that troubled Remus. He still had to obtain the weapon, get it to Minayev who would get it to the KGB and then it wouldn’t be Remus’ problem any longer and he could forget about it.

This was his mission. These were the people he had worked for, who had given him safety and purpose and _meaning_ when the war had taken it all from him. Whatever he had with Sirius, absent though it had been, ran deeper than that, and there was no point denying it. Now he was back by Sirius’ side; Sirius, who had never betrayed him.

Sirius, who still had his own allegiances.

Remus had to finish this job, had to get the weapon out of enemy hands—and what would the CIA have to say to that?

 

* * *

 

Soon after Remus and Sirius had sat down for breakfast, Lily joined them at their table by the window. Her bowl was piled high with tinned peaches and yoghurt from the breakfast buffet, and she looked confused to see the two of them together. Remus wouldn’t blame her. This was inches away from blowing his cover, but he was powerless to resist it.

“Morning,” she said. “Did you slip out, Ilya?”

“I stayed the night with… Dick.” At the look on Lily’s face, Remus added, “It’s not like that.”

“Sure,” Lily said. She did not sound like she believed him. “Oh—I forgot to get a spoon. I’ll be back.”

As she went back across the dining hall, Sirius fixed Remus with a frown. “Are we not telling her?”

“It’s good practise,” Remus said. “Even if she knows most of what’s going on.”

“You’re being overcautious. It’s not like she’s a bloody double agent.”

Remus clinked a teaspoon around inside his cup of earl grey to cover his voice: “Don’t say these things so loud. Listen, Dick. Either we play the game by the book or we lose. You’ve got to—”

Sirius made a face and a gesture that meant Lily was coming back.

“—you’ve got a spoon!” Remus finished, turning to Lily and giving her a useless smile.

Lily sat back down, and made almost the exact same face.

“You’ve got a spoon,” Remus said again, like that made it any better. “Well done, you.”

“Thanks,” Lily said. “I think.”

Remus recovered from his momentary lapse of good sense. “We’ve been talking about our plan for the rest of the day. Once we’ve met the Malfoys for lunch, Dick will be done with Narcissa, and we can regroup to discuss anything we might’ve discovered. After that… there mightn’t be much time to act. We need to scope out the Manoir and see if we spot any particularly good hiding places.”

Was that too obvious? Sirius gave him an unimpressed look, but Lily nodded eagerly.

“The sooner we do this, the better,” she said.

“Speaking of,” Sirius said, “I’d better get on my way. I’ve got a date with Mrs. Malfoy, after all.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Remus said.

Sirius winked at him. “I didn’t get where I am without taking a few risks. Meet you back at the hotel?”

“Presidential suite,” Remus said. “This time, don’t make so much of a fuss when you knock.”

Lily waited until Sirius was out of sight and said, “But really—you two seem on much better terms this morning.”

“We talked a few things out. Our relationship isn’t what it was after so many years apart. There’s mending still to be done, but it’s a start.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Her smile dropped. “Now that he’s gone, though, there’s a point of business I want to discuss with you. I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“There are lots of things I don’t like,” Remus said. “Tell me.”

“Send your apologies. I should meet with Lucius and Narcissa alone. Before you say anything—Narcissa wants to take me on as a vanity project, that much is clear. Lucius isn’t evidently interested in me, but if he has guessed who I am, as we planned, then he will be. And I know for sure that Snape will be more likely to talk if it’s just me.”

“Yes, about Snape. He knows who I am, I’m certain of it.”

One of Remus’ favourite tricks that he’d perfected over the years was talking about something as though he was making a guess at it, when in fact he knew it for certain. Snape had made it very clear that he knew who Ilya Prokofiev really was—restrict information only to those who need it.

“Then let me go alone,” Lily said. “You can search the Manoir grounds while I distract them.”

Again. Remus had no intention of putting himself back in that position. No, if Lily were meeting with the Malfoys alone, then he would be one place and one place only: in the distance, watching and listening in. Actually… that mightn’t be a terrible idea.

“On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You make a good point that Snape will be more likely to let certain things through to you, even if it is in his best interests to keep you away from James. Don’t look at me like that—you know he used to fancy you, don’t you?”

“I know,” Lily said, and she didn’t look half pleased about it.

“So what’s more interesting to me is how Lucius and Narcissa will treat you if I’m not around,” Remus continued. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.”

It dawned on Lily. “And you can.”

“If you let me bug you.”

She didn’t answer immediately. Remus understood that it was not a particularly appealing idea, and that it conveyed a lack of trust on his part—if she wasn’t bugged, he would have to rely on her to report the conversation exactly as it happened. Remus was very good at relying on no-one at all.

At last, Lily said, “If you must. I know this change of plans must be hard on you.”

“Not hard,” Remus said. “Challenging. You can overcome a challenge.”

“Then do what you must.”

 

* * *

 

Of course, Remus did not intend to solely listen in. The bug he’d planted on Lily could track, too, and it tracked her to a part of the Manoir overlooking the sea. There were no trees, only a green-painted fence between the manicured gardens and the rocky outcrop—alarmingly low security compared to the rest of the grounds, but perhaps they had long since deemed it unlikely that anyone walking on the coastal path would stop to climb up a prominent and jagged cliff face. Remus took the path, old timber clinging to the rock above open sea, and stopped below the spot his tracker led him to. He couldn’t see Lily, but being close made him feel more secure in it all.

The sound of people sitting down at a table rustled in his headset. “Thank you for the tour,” Lily was saying, “and again, I’m so sorry that Ilya could not make it.”

“It is a great pity he was taken ill so suddenly,” Lucius said.

“The lifestyle takes a great toll on one,” Narcissa said, more kindly. “Perhaps we ought to have given him more time to recover from his travel.”

Remus was reassured to hear her voice; that meant she was done with Sirius, and their meeting had been quick and painless. Or she had seen through Sirius’ cover, and his death had been quick and painless—Remus would not entertain that thought.

“If I might interject,” Snape said. “I believe it may be advantageous that it’s just the four of us, and we can speak openly.”

“Indeed,” Lucius said. “Does Ilya know your real name, Lily Potter?”

This was it. Their plan was working, and they were one step closer to James. And the weapon, but Remus was thinking less and less about that by the minute.

“We don’t need to call him Ilya when he’s not around,” Snape said.

Remus froze. This was not part of the plan.

“Oh, how intriguing,” Lucius said. “I didn’t miss that look, Lily. You mustn’t worry. You’re safe with us. Tell me, who is Ilya Prokofiev? Who is he really?”

“His name is Remus Lupin.”

Remus was so on edge that for a moment he didn’t realise it was Lily who spoke. Snape blowing his cover—that was a risk he was already taking, and an outcome he would almost have expected. But Lily? What did Lily have to gain from these people?

That was a stupid question. Remus knew exactly what she had to gain. But he had trusted that she would stick to their plan. He had—perhaps naively—trusted her.

Lucius hummed. “The name rings a bell. One of your Order, wasn’t he?”

“A known associate of James Potter,” Snape said, “and Sirius Black.”

“That’s right,” Lily said. “If, as you say, I can talk openly… Sirius Black is here too. He and Lupin are secret agents—for the CIA and the KGB, respectively. They’ve teamed up for reasons they won’t fully disclose to me, but I know why they’re using me. They have intel that you’re—that James is here. That your Dark Lord is using him to build a weapon.”

“Half right,” Snape said offhandedly.

Half right? Which half, Remus thought frantically. Which fucking half?

“I feel almost one step behind, to have missed this detail about Lupin,” Lucius said. “You see, Lily, I knew that Sirius Black was here. Narcissa saw right through his pathetic disguise.”

“In fact, I met with _Dick Branigan_ earlier today,” Narcissa added, “for—ah, shall I be delicate and call it tea?”

“I don’t have to tell you it wasn’t a social call. He should be meeting with his cousin Bellatrix now, shouldn’t he?”

Sirius. Shit. Remus had to get to him, had to warn him; he hoped like hell it wasn’t too late.

The party laughed, except for Lily, who said, “I’m not on your side, and I’m not going to take pleasure in your victories. Don’t mistake my information for collaboration. I’m here for one thing only.”

“I know,” Lucius said, “and we’re grateful for your information. You will be rewarded; but I think you can be of some help to us yet.”

“For the price of James’ safety,” Lily said.

“I guarantee it.”

“Then I’ll give you one more piece of information,” Lily said. Remus could hear her moving as she spoke. “Remus Lupin is listening to every word we’ve said. And, if I know him well enough…”

All of a sudden he could hear her voice in duplicate, the sound in his headset an echo of someone talking as they drew closer.

“… then he’s nearby, too.”

Remus wasted no time. He Disapparated, not caring how much noise he made, and landed dizzily in his hotel room. He had fumbled and dropped his tracking monitor. That would be something he’d clear up when—if—all this was done, otherwise the KGB would have his head. But he still had the headset, which he took out now and shoved in his pocket. He couldn’t bear to listen. He couldn’t linger, either—Lily had been here, so it was compromised.

She had betrayed them. Remus wondered if he ought to have expected it; after all, nothing was more important to her than getting to James. And she had let Remus hear her do it. Was that for Remus, to give him an opportunity? Maybe, but he wasn’t willing to give Lily the benefit of doubt a second time. He had to get to Sirius.

He did not think about the fact that, if Sirius was with Bellatrix, it might be too late.

And where would they have taken him? There was nothing else for it—Remus was going to have to go back to the Manoir.

He had only been to the Manoir twice, and had a limited knowledge of its layout. Sirius could be anywhere. Remus had learnt his lesson from his last visit—he was not about to dive in without backup. Backup, in this case, was a backpack of anything useful he could find. Potions and flares, a length of robe, smoke bombs, a gun. Things Remus kept around for missions when his demimonde was less exciting and Minayev had Muggle work for him. The only thing he needed for regular missions was his wand, and he didn’t know how useful that would be against someone like Bellatrix Lestrange.

Remus looked himself up and down in one of the presidential suite’s many mirrors. “Alright,” he said. “No time to waste.”

With a clear picture in his mind—the section of road by the fence where he had made a narrow escape last night—he Apparated. This wasn’t the time for caution. If he was picked up by a monitoring spell, then so be it.

Luck, for now, was on his side. He landed safely alongside the wall, and climbed over, walked through the grounds undetected. He easily found the shadowy building hemmed in by trees, the rooms that Remus didn’t get a chance to explore. There were no sounds, no-one about.

Wand ready, he made for the locked door. In daylight, he saw it was a low-ceilinged door of charcoal-black wood, the kind of place that might have been a stable or an armoury in the Middle Ages and had been rendered useless with the passage of time.

He turned the doorknob—it was unlocked. The door creaked as it inched open.

From inside, a voice called, “Cissy?”

Remus stilled, stepping back. He wished he hadn’t guessed so well. Now he was here, Bellatrix was here, and likely Sirius too, and Remus didn’t feel ready for this confrontation at all.

“Is that you?” Bellatrix called again. “Who is it?”

“Think fast,” Remus whispered to himself, and threw a smoke bomb in through the crack in the door.

The effect was instantaneous. Bellatrix started coughing, and so did a second person—Sirius. In the confusion, Remus pushed the door open a crack and stepped in, waving his wand to carve patterns of cleared paths through the smoke. He could just make out a figure slumped at the far end of what seemed to be a large, open area, with a domed roof that made it seem less of a stable and more of a bunker. It wouldn’t be long until the smoke cleared, or Bellatrix worked out what had happened and did it herself.

It was the latter—a gust of wind blew through the bunker and nearly knocked Remus off his feet. As he pulled himself back upright, he heard Bellatrix yell a curse, and threw up a non-verbal _Protego_. Non-verbal spells gave a duellist a tangible advantage, and luckily for Remus, they were also entirely contrary to Bellatrix Lestrange’s loud, eccentric magic.

“Who the hell are you?” she said, wand pointed squarely at Remus.

“Nobody you’ve met. I’m here for someone else.”

Now, with the smoke fully parted, Remus could see Sirius properly. After so many years at war, Remus no longer knew how to recoil at the sight of something objectively horrifying, but he came close now. Sirius was shackled to the wall with manacles that must have been made of something stronger than iron. He lay on his side, no physical abrasions but all the tells of someone who’d recently been Cruciated; blood running from his nose, bags under his eyes like bruises, a distant stare. There were other pairs of manacles lining the walls too, empty now, but evident enough as to why this place was kept so well out of the way. It was the Malfoys’ own private torture chamber.

“Oh,” Bellatrix said, “you mean the Black Sheep?”

Bellatrix flicked her wand and in a fraction of a second, hissed a lazy _Crucio_. By the time Remus had his wand arm out in front of him, Sirius was crying out in pain. Bellatrix had not even turned to look at him.

She made a noise like a sheep. “We’re having a lot of fun.”

“You’ve got a strange idea of fun,” Remus said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to—”

“Wait.” Bellatrix narrowed her eyes at him. “I know who you are. You’re that Prokofiev fellow. You were at the soirée.”

“That’s right,” he said, thinking fast. “My apologies for the smoke bomb—I wasn’t sure who I’d find. But I’m on your side. Lucius sent me.”

It was a gamble, but Remus didn’t imagine the Malfoys communicated too much with Bellatrix. She was too much of a wildcard to be anything more than their attack dog. They had trusted her with Sirius, but would they trust her with Liesel Gensch’s true identity?

“I didn’t realise you were close,” Bellatrix said.

“We’re not,” Remus said. “Hand over Black, and I’ll take it from here.”

“You were coming for lunch, I heard. You and your wife. Is she with them now?”

“Liesel is none of your concern. I said give me Black, and I’ll—”

“You don’t know her real name? You don’t know that she’s using you, Prokofiev?” Bellatrix came closer, twirling her wand in circles. “Why, right now, I imagine that she’s with Cissy and Lucius thinking of ways to dispose of you so that she can get her real husband back.”

Remus feigned shock. “Her real husband? What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you heard? James Potter is alive. He never died for his cause, and neither did his wife Lily—Liesel, to you, I suppose. Oh, I imagine they sent you here so that I could dispense with you. What a lovely surprise!”

“That won’t be happening.” Remus threw up a shield preemptively; Bellatrix was too predictable, her next curse bursting forth and reflecting back in an erratic shower of sparks. “You’re lying to me. My wife would never betray me. Tell me where Potter is and I’ll finish what the Dark Lord started.”

Sirius stirred, laughing weakly. It took all of Remus’ willpower not to break character, not to look, not to laugh with him at how ridiculous this all was.

“You’ll never make it there,” Bellatrix said. “You’ll be dead long before you can even think about setting sail.”

She seemed to realise that she had given something away, because the next moment her wand was in the air, and before Remus could stop to think what he was doing he was duelling her, throwing up curses and shields in turn. Bellatrix duelled on a knife-edge. This was not torture. This was to the death.

Remus had no intention of killing her. He knew how to wear down an opponent, or rather, how to trick them into wearing themselves out. He stood still to start with, and allowed Bellatrix to think she was on the attack. She threw curses at him, but Remus’ shield charms were too fast to come and too strong to waver, and he mercifully dodged each Killing Curse she threw into the mix. He had done this all across Europe; he could turn off his mind and focus solely on the machinations.

At last, when she twigged that her strategy wasn’t working, she charged for him. Remus would usually use this as an opportunity to Apparate, but with the magic on this place holding him back he had to be cleverer. He threw another smoke bomb and stepped a few paces back and to the left. Bellatrix charged into the smoke—she had learnt fast, though, and cleared it within moments.

“By all means,” Remus said, tossing a smoke bomb up and down with his free hand, “I can keep doing this.”

“You mock me. I’ll finish you before you can say—”

Remus didn’t wait to hear what he would say. Bellatrix was frustrated, which meant she would be more vulnerable to suggestion. Remus put on a shocked expression and gaped at Sirius—he would apologise later for potentially throwing him into the line of fire.

“He’s getting away!” Remus shouted, pointing his wand at Sirius.

Bellatrix turned. As she did, Remus shot her with a full body bind. She fell slowly, immobile.

“Stupid,” he said. Flashy duellists were always, on some level, stupid.

Remus stepped over Bellatrix on his way to Sirius, and blasted the manacles open. Sirius shifted, but he wasn’t able to sit up with his own strength. Remus held Sirius by the shoulders so that he didn’t fall back down; he was unsettlingly limp, like his bones had become disarrayed beneath his skin and all slid to the bottom.

Sirius’ neck was slumped forward, and now his head came to rest on Remus’ shoulder. “I’m the stupid one.”

“You’re not.”

“I really thought Narcissa hadn’t recognised me.” He laughed, and it turned into a cough. “Just the sunglasses… I should’ve worn more of a disguise than just the bloody sunglasses.”

“Alright,” Remus said, smiling, “you’re a bit stupid.”

“Lucky I’ve got you to pick up after me.”

Remus hummed. “How did you cope with all your other missions?”

Sirius had regained some of his strength, and he pulled back now, clasping Remus’ upper arms to steady himself. He smirked. “I wasn’t half so stupid without you around.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault now, is it?” Remus carefully pulled one of his arms free of Sirius’ grasp so that he could get into his backpack. “You’re lucky I like you, in that case.”

“Lucky you forgave me, too.”

Remus bit his lip. He wasn’t thinking about that. This was the worst possible moment for him to start doubting his commitment to the mission. His feelings could wait.

At the bottom of his bag of tricks, Remus found a vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion and held it up to Sirius’ mouth with his free hand. Sirius swallowed uneasily, and coughed. Then his jaw dropped, and he lurched forward, grabbing the front of Remus’ shirt.

“Did you hear what she said?” Sirius coughed again, wincing. “The island.”

“I heard. When you’re well enough, we’ll go straight there.”

Sirius shook his head. “No time to waste. I’m fine. We’ll go now.”

“You should rest,” Remus said, although he couldn’t help but agree. The curse on Bellatrix could lift any moment now, and if they didn’t deal with her quickly she’d make even more trouble for them.

Like it had been ten years ago, Sirius seemed to understand exactly what Remus was thinking, no matter what he said. “We both know that’s not going to happen.” Unsteadily, and putting a lot of his weight onto Remus, he stood. “Do you want to kill her, or shall I?”

Remus winced. “I don’t kill.”

“Of course not,” Sirius said. He raised his wand. “ _Avada_ —”

“Wait.” Before Remus knew what he was doing, his hand shot out and he clasped Sirius’ wrist, drawing his arm back. “Let’s just put her in manacles. Or something.”

“Merlin, what do they normally have you do?”

“Alright, let me put it another way,” Remus said. “I don’t kill _anymore_. Are you happy?”

“Very far from it,” Sirius said. His flippant smile slipped into a grim frown. “Alright. Let’s tie her up and get out of here. Wait until Lily hears what we’ve discovered.”

Remus felt his heart sink to his feet and right through the ground. “About that.”

“What happened? Is she safe?”

“Lily’s still with Snape and the Malfoys, as far as I can tell,” Remus said. “She—broke our cover. She told them who we are, and—”

He didn’t get to finish what he was saying. Sirius, furious, stamped his foot, kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Did she tell them who we worked for?”

“She told them everything. I know why she did it—she wants the same thing we do, and although I didn’t expect it of her, she really is willing to do anything to get James back. We can’t trust her.”

“Then it’s just you and me,” Sirius said. He pointed his wand at Bellatrix. “Together?”

“Yes, I think so,” Remus said.

As they locked her up—not as clean as death, but kinder—Remus and Sirius could not keep their eyes off one another. Remus knew that this was childish, to fall back into a years-old infatuation with someone who was still technically the enemy, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help the thrill he got when, after they’d dealt with Bellatrix, Sirius held out his hand, and Remus took it, trusting that Sirius would Apparate to wherever they needed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Meine Liebe, es tut mir leid das ich störe,” he said, “aber der Fremde macht nur Ärger hinten.” = “My dear, I'm sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but there is a foreigner making a nuisance of himself back there.”
> 
> “Devrions-nous parler en anglais ou en français pour nos invités?” = “Shall we speak in English or in French for our guests?”
> 
> “Avez-vous déjà rencontré un russe?” = “Have you met a Russian before?”


	3. Île des Sortilèges

 

Île des Sortilèges was a half-hour boat ride south of the southernmost point of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, according to a very sketchy map that Sirius had picked up on his visit to the Quartier Magique. As the sun set over the crystal-blue waters, Sirius convinced a Muggle fisher by the coast that he was some kind of movie star, and in turn that he would need the Muggle’s boat for the foreseeable future and would return it as soon as he could, promise. Neither he nor Remus had ever sailed in their life, so they rigged it to run off magic and sailed it against the tides.

The island loomed unassumingly in the distance; there were some trees, but not enough to constitute a forest. There were some buildings, windswept wooden shacks, not large enough to hide a Dark Lord, a dead man, and their weapon. Everything about the place gave the sense that it was several hours later there than the rest of the world around it, a sort of perpetual nighttime. At first Remus thought this might be his own fear magnifying every shadow, but as they drew closer he realised that the darkness was in the earth, the trees, the leaves. The island was painted in duller hues.

“There’s definitely something powerful going on here,” Sirius said. “It must be well-hidden; although I’m surprised You-Know-Who didn’t employ a secret keeper for the whole island.”

“Maybe he knows how fickle secret keepers can be.”

Sirius huffed. “Maybe. Or maybe it was Bellatrix.”

“Well, as we’ve learnt today,” Remus said, “there’s nobody quite as unreliable as an ally.”

They moored their boat by the shallow pebble beach that ringed the island as far as Remus could see—at least, he assumed that this was what mooring entailed.

“I don’t suppose they’re keeping You-Know-Who in a shack on a beach,” Sirius said.

Remus shrugged. “Can’t hurt to check.”

It was a short walk across the beach to the nearest and largest shack, pebbles rolling underfoot and wind blowing crisp. The door to the shack on the beach gave easily; it was empty inside, the floor covered in a thick layer of dust. Remus almost felt bad scuffing it with his footprints, but he wanted to search for any hidden hatches, anything that might suggest there was something more to this island than antiquated desolation.

Sirius followed him in and shut the door behind, leaving them in almost total darkness. Remus blinked a few seconds, readjusted, and then the door was opening again, and he stumbled backwards, crashing into Sirius and almost toppling the both of them.

It was Snape.

Remus drew his wand. He first realised something was off when Snape didn’t draw his—a peace offering. But for what?

“Give me one good reason,” Sirius said, wand drawn too, “not to hex you here and now.”

Snape put his hands up, palms forward. “Unfortunate as it is, I’m on your side, Black.”

“Sounds like something that someone who wasn’t on our side would say.”

“Trust me,” Snape said, “I would rather be anywhere but here.”

Remus pulled his backpack around and fished in it for a vial he kept for emergencies. “If you’re really on our side, you won’t be averse to a drop of Veritaserum.”

Snape held out an arm and tried to snatch it; Remus drew it back.

“Nice try. I’ll administer it. Open your mouth.”

“This is brilliant,” Sirius said. “Watching Snivellus do what he’s told… feels like it’s Christmas already.”

Remus put the tiniest drop of Veritaserum on Snape’s tongue, measured out by the slim shaft of light that came in through the door to the shack—if he’d told his past self that he’d get this close to Snape in the name of a mission, he would’ve been revolted. This was one old grudge that wouldn’t fade easily. When he was done, he asked, “Who are you, and why are you here?”

“My name is Severus Snape. I work for Albus Dumbledore; I’m currently on sabbatical from my position teaching Potions at Hogwarts to do undercover work for the Order of the Phoenix. I’m spying on the Malfoys and trying to get to James Potter before the Dark Lord finishes his weapon.”

“They let you teach?” Remus said. This surprised him more than the fact that Snape was a spy for the Order. It would be just their luck—one spy from each of the major powers, and a recipe for disaster.

Sirius snorted. “I feel for the students. Where’s James, Snivellus? Is he acting under Imperius?”

“I believe not,” Snape said. “My understanding is that they have some kind of leverage over him. And I don’t know where he is. Somewhere on this island, but I’ve never been allowed too deep into the compound.”

“But you know how to get in,” Sirius said.

“Passwords. Just like Hogwarts.” Snape paused, looking between Remus, Sirius, and the dusty floor. “ _Inferius_.”

The floor vanished, and the three of them went hurtling down a dark shaft. Remus knew that Snape wouldn’t have done it if there was any chance they wouldn’t land safely, and he resented him even more for that. He would not give Snape the pleasure of shouting out in surprise. Sirius was not so canny, and Snape must’ve known that he was recovering from being tortured—Remus had never hated Snape more, not in all their years together at Hogwarts, than when Sirius cried out as they fell.

Close to the bottom, a lattice of spellwork in the air slowed their descent, and Remus managed to land on his feet. He stooped to help Sirius up, and he definitely did not give Snape a one-fingered salute over Sirius’ shoulder, because they were not at Hogwarts anymore, and Remus was better than that, though not by much.

“You’re the last person I want on my side,” he told Snape, “but this will have to do. Give me your best guess—where’s James?”

“I believe your potion has worn off,” Snape said, clearly relishing it. “I am under no obligation to give you anything. I suggest you follow me. I’ll be the leader. It is in my interests to find Potter, too.”

“I’ll bet Dumbledore just wants the weapon for himself,” Sirius spat.

Remus would bet the same, but he shifted uncomfortably nonetheless. “Let’s get a move on.”

With Snape leading the way, Remus was free to look around and take in his surroundings. They stood in a space like the crypt of a cathedral, a labyrinthine circuitry of sandstone corridors up ahead, half-visible through the structural supports that functioned as walls.

“Think of this as the reception area,” Snape said. “I’ve never been allowed past here, but I know roughly where to go. The Malfoys have never thought to be particularly cautious around me.”

Remus understood that; he had been fooled too. “You’ve hid your treachery well.”

“As those in our profession tend to.”

“Our profession,” Sirius said, “has nothing to do with yours.”

Snape gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Of course.”

Remus was becoming less comfortable with the idea of Snape being on their side; it had been well and good when all they wanted to do was get inside the base, but they couldn’t trust his motives. He hadn’t said _why_ he was working for Dumbledore. It could as easily be an extension of his designs on Lily as anything else. Had he known she was alive before she wrote to him from Berlin? He hadn’t acted surprised to see her at the soirée. The pieces weren’t quite fitting together.

At least Remus was certain of one thing: before Lily had blown their cover, Snape would have had no way of knowing that Remus and Sirius were here for any reason other than their own personal attachment. Their _profession_. Perhaps Sirius would work it out now, that Snape knew. That maybe he knew more than both of them put together. Remus didn’t like the idea of that either.

They came at last to a door at the far end of the space they’d passed through, reinforced metal bludgeoned into the stone wall. Remus hadn’t expected to see something so Muggle in such magical heartland. He and Sirius stood back as Snape cast a particular pattern onto the bolts of the door to unlock it; Remus didn’t have to look at Sirius to know that he, too, was memorising the pattern.

Stepping through the door was like stepping into another world. The centuries-old sandstone gave way to more metal, frosted glass doors and blinking LEDs. It was so incongruous it was almost laughable, though none of them would dare in an atmosphere this heavy.

“I didn’t think…” Snape began. He swallowed the rest of his sentence.

“There’s a lot of glass,” Sirius said. “Merlin. I wish we still had Potter’s bloody—”

Remus elbowed him, and Sirius clammed right up. Snape didn’t need to know about the Invisibility Cloak. And it had likely been lost when James died—or was captured, however it had happened. They could ask him, if James really was here.

In lieu of an Invisibility Cloak, they paused to equip themselves with Disillusionment charms and silencing spells of all stripes. From here on in, it was all guesswork. Snape led the way—Remus got the feeling that he would have sooner handed them to the Malfoys than take the rear—and they pressed on. They walked past rooms with high glass windows; at first, the rooms were empty, but soon Remus began to see shapes beyond the glass, strange modern sculptures. There was a chair which flickered in and out of existence like static on a television screen. A human heart made of glass, veins and arteries extending from it like tendrils of lava erupting from a volcano; a black and misshapen mineral that looked like the ghost of something lost in a fire. A room which was filled with water, crystalline aquamarine with dim shadows flitting across its surface.

And at the end of one long corridor in the grim museum, a door with a placard reading: _Potter — containment_. It was locked beyond the force of every unlocking spell the three of them knew between them. There were no windows.

Remus put a hand to the cool metal. “He’s in there.”

“But in what state?” Sirius put his hand over Remus’ and pulled it away from the door. “If he’s anything like the rest of the things down here…”

“Oh, don’t be macabre.”

Snape opened his mouth to add something. On the one hand, the sound of voices coming towards them stopped him from making any foul utterances; on the other hand, there were voices coming towards them, and there was nowhere to hide. They had their Disillusionment charms, but there was always the chance that they’d have to move out of the way—it wasn’t a wide corridor—and then they’d make too much noise. Or worse, their charms could wear off. Remus locked eyes with Sirius—they were both thinking the same thing. It had to be one of these rooms.

The nearest gallery room was locked normally, and a simple Alohomora had it swinging open. This room’s display piece was a rose bush in a pot, sitting too low to be visible through the window. Sirius, foolishly, reached out to touch it, but before he could get too close the roses’ petals arced with sparks, the kind of bright-white magic that was indistinguishable from electricity.

The three of them crouched beneath the window. The crackling fire around the rose bush abated; the voices came closer.

“This is it,” said a gruff voice. _Avery_ , Snape mouthed.

“Thank you for bringing me this far.” That was Lily. “You’ve been most kind.”

Lucius Malfoy spoke next: “It’s been our pleasure. And there is much you can do to repay us. The chief scientist will need all the help he can get.”

“Oi,” said a fourth voice. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

Remus acted reflexively, flinging a hand across Sirius’ mouth. Sirius, wide-eyed, would have called out otherwise. Remus had always been his impulse control—although he was having a hard enough time controlling himself.

It was James.

“My apologies,” Lucius sneered, “but given your recent uncooperativeness, you will forgive me for possessing less good will towards you than usual.”

“Which isn’t much to begin with,” James said, “so you’ll forgive me for not making an effort to win back your favour.”

“If you don’t mind,” Lily interrupted.

Lucius made a noise of annoyance. “Of course. I’ll leave it to you.”

“I think that given the sensitive nature of this work, it would be best to leave James and I alone for this.”

There was a long silence. At last, Lucius said. “Yes, if that is what you deem necessary. However, in the future, I think it would be wise for one of our men to supervise your work, as is usually the case.”

“Just say yes, Lily, so he’ll piss off.”

“Funny,” Lucius said. “I see what you mean about being spoken about as though you’re not present. Very well—come along, Avery.”

As two pairs of footsteps receded along the corridor, Sirius slowly rose to look through the window. He must have been pleased with what he saw, because the next moment he was bending down to yank Remus up with him and casting _Finite_ on all three of them as they stood properly.

And there on the other side of the glass was James, ten years older but no less James Potter—alive. Remus had believed his intel—he was paid to believe it—but it hadn’t felt true until this moment. James was alive, Sirius had never betrayed him, and now here they all were. It was like something out of the stories Remus had told himself in his early days in Moscow, what-ifs as he fell asleep to imagine that he had some company, or would, soon. It had come nine years too late and hurt all the more for it. Remus supposed it wouldn’t have been as wrenchingly satisfying, though, if not for the wait.

Either way, his mission was drawing to a close, and he couldn’t have cared less about it. James was alive. Who cared about the bloody weapon?

James covered his mouth with both hands, bouncing up and down with glee. Lily smiled, too. It wasn’t the smile of someone who’d wanted her companions dead. She looked surprised to see Snape there with them, though, as he stood; James looked downright scandalised.

Lily gestured to the door to the rose bush room, and Remus nodded. There were precautions to be taken—they had to stay out of sight, stay silent until there were enough charms and protective spells around the room—and it was hasty, messy work, overwhelmed as Remus was, and as he was sure James and Sirius were too.

When the spells were finally up, James let out a yell. “Bloody hell! Fuck! Look at you—this is—”

Sirius cut him off with a strangling hug.

“I’m so glad you made it,” Lily said. “I hoped you would.”

And she meant it. Remus gave her as much of a glare as he would allow himself. “So betraying us was all for show? I wish you’d told me beforehand.”

“I had to make it seem real. I wasn’t going to get in here if the Malfoys didn’t think I was truly on their side, and I knew you would be able to follow me to wherever they took me. I didn’t know about Sirius and Bellatrix, though—I’m sorry about that.”

“You don’t need to apologise,” Sirius said, letting go of James at last. Remus wasn’t sure if he’d have been so kind, but he was glad for it.

“Wait, wait,” James said, “what’s all this about? Who betrayed who? Who was tracking… what?”

“It’s a very long story,” Remus said.

“So I’ll make it short.” Sirius counted on his fingers: “Remus and I came here to rescue you, we picked up Lily on the way, Lily sold us to the Malfoys to get to you—”

“And to find out where they were keeping you,” Lily said. “I knew we wouldn’t find this place on our own.”

Sirius nodded. “Makes sense. Right, so we picked up Snivellus—sorry, Snape—on the way, because it turns out he’s a spy, and he let us into this complex, and now we’re here. Oh, and I’m also a spy. We all are. Except Lily.”

“No, I’m a spy too,” Lily said. She shrugged. “How do you think I made it look so convincing? I’ve been doing this for years.”

Snape spoke up at last—perhaps being among friends who weren’t his had unnerved him into silence. “Who do you work for?”

“Dumbledore.”

“How uncanny,” he said. “I too work for Dumbledore.”

“Merlin, don’t the bloody MI6 have a magical branch?” Sirius said. “How do you cope?”

James, who had been watching this conversation unfold with baffled curiosity, chimed in again: “Yeah, I wondered about the accent. So you’re, what, working for the Americans?”

“Hey,” Sirius said, “at least it’s not the—”

“The Russians, he’s going to say,” Remus said, “and for the record, the Russians are hardly any worse.”

Sirius winked at him, and then turned back to James. “As you can see, we’ve remained the best of friends these last nine years.”

“And here we all are,” James said. “A proper Marauders reunion.”

“Minus one,” Remus said, and wished he hadn’t.

James bowed his head. “It’s for the best that Peter isn’t here with us.”

“So it _was_ him,” Sirius said, punching his own fist.

“Peter’s dead, James,” Remus said. “He died in an explosion when the Order came for Sirius.”

“The Order—?”

“Oh, I was framed for your murder and sent to Azkaban, but I escaped.” Sirius shrugged as though this was all in a day’s work. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

“So all my best friends are spies, and you’re working with my oldest enemy.” James shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“And you’re working with our enemy,” Remus pointed out. “Developing a weapon for He Who Must Not Be Named. We heard it wasn’t Imperius—that the Death Eaters had something on you. Leverage.”

James and Lily shared a look.

“Why don’t I show you?” he said.

Checking that there was no-one out there, they stepped back into the corridor. James went to the room marked _containment_. One hand holding Lily’s tightly, his other hovered over the doorknob. “Before I say the password, I want to warn you.”

“A password,” Snape said. “Of course.”

Lily glared at him. He narrowed his mouth into a stubborn line.

“Don’t be shocked by what you see,” James said.

Sirius looked back at the room they’d come from. “Your weapon did this. The rose bush, all these monstrosities… it did this.”

“Not _it_ ,” James said. “He.”

Before Remus could ask what that was supposed to mean—he was terrified that he might already know—James closed his hand around the doorknob and whispered the password, _Fluxweed_.

The door opened onto a white-walled room. At the corner of the room was a single bed, and in the centre was a desk, strewn with paper covered in drawings. Behind the desk sat a boy in the chair, pencil in hand and poised over a page almost entirely obscured by childlike flowers. He had James’ messy hair and dark skin, and when he looked up he had Lily’s green eyes and an unlikely smile on his face.

“Dad!”

“Hi, Harry,” James said. “I brought some friends to meet you.”

Harry’s smile faded, and Remus felt as though his heart was wrenching itself in two. Here was a child, almost old enough to go to Hogwarts, and he had been locked in a room without windows for the greater part of his life with nothing to entertain him but pen and paper. At least he had his father, and at least James seemed in impossibly good spirits.

Harry got up from the table slowly. “Do you want me to show them some tricks?”

“No tricks today. Harry, you remember—” James’ voice broke.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Remus said.

“No, stay.” James crouched by the table. “Harry, I’ve brought your mum to see you. She’s been travelling with her friends, and they found us.”

“You always said _we_ would find _her_.”

He glared at his father, before it seemed to sink in and he leapt to his feet. Lily opened her arms and Harry ran into them.

Remus looked away. He felt like an intruder, but typical James, to drag everyone into the whirlwind of his emotions, to make it into a spectacle. That alone gave him heart. James was here, being the same idiot he’d always been. Remus could have cried, if he hadn’t been trained better than that. Harry was crying. The war had turned Remus and Sirius into soldiers, and it had turned a child into a weapon—but not so comprehensively that he had lost his humanity. It was a credit to James.

James, in turn, introduced the others to Harry. “These are my old friends, Remus and Sirius. We haven’t seen each other for a very long time. And that’s Snape, but don’t worry about him.”

“Are they going to take us home?” Harry asked. “I’m so bored. I don’t even get to make art anymore.”

Remus had a feeling that was down to what he’d overheard—that James had been stalling, and Lily was here to speed it up. A plan was already beginning to form in his mind, but he would wait to see what Sirius thought.

“Soon,” Lily said. “We have to go now, but we’ll be back. It won’t be for long—I promise.”

They left Harry—Remus could see how hard it was for Lily, in particular—and repaired to the rose bush room.

“Lily already knows what happened,” James said, “but I owe you two the full story.” He glanced at Snape. “I suppose you can listen too.”

“Your kindness never ceases to amaze,” Snape said.

James smoothed his hair back just like he always used to—had he been given room to grow in here, Remus wondered? How much of him was stuck nine years in the past?

“That night, after Lily and I were separated, You Know Who caught up with me and Harry. I didn’t even know the full details of why he was after us, but he looked serious about it. I thought we were done for. Then—the curses I expected never came. Next thing I know, there are Death Eaters reinforcements and we were being stunned. The last thing I heard was You Know Who saying, _Take them to France_. Harry and I woke up somewhere down here. We are in France, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Sirius said. “And you haven’t seen light since?”

James shook his head. “For the first few years we had no contact with the old bat. We went about life as normally as we could. Eventually, You Know Who started visiting and I became acquainted with his plan. There was a prophecy—he only knew it in fragments—that a child born at the end of July was to be his downfall. Well, you know what people say. If you can't beat ’em,  join ’em. Harry wouldn’t be around to bring about his downfall if You Know Who turned him into the ultimate weapon first, and had him fight for his side. A boy soldier.”

“So those rumors we heard,” Remus said, “about you helping He Who Must Not Be Named…”

“What could I have done otherwise? He would have killed us both. I had to stay alive. I knew that Lily was out there, and I knew she’d find me.”

“And I did,” Lily said. “Sorry for bringing a welcoming party, too.”

“You’re forgiven, of course,” James said. “With more people on our side—I feel like we might actually be able to get out of here.”

Damn the KGB and to hell with Remus’ mission. He would not let anyone lay a hand on this _weapon_.

“We will,” he said. “And we’ll do it tonight.”

 

* * *

 

As Remus crouched in the rose bush room, Sirius brooding and Snape frostier than usual, he couldn’t shake the sense that this wouldn’t work. James was alive, and that was almost too good to be true—now, something had to go wrong.

They waited while James and Lily negotiated with a Death Eater.

“With Lily’s help,” James said, “the project should be complete in a few hours.”

“By midnight?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” James said at last. “By midnight.”

“Very well,” the Death Eater says. “We will collect you from here at a quarter to twelve, and take you to the Dark Lord, to present your work.”

“Oh, he’s here, is he?” James asked, so casually it sounded forced. It was like witnessing someone blow their cover in reverse—he had offered conclusive proof that he was _not_ a spy.

The Death Eater did not deign to comment. “Quarter to twelve. Have the weapon ready, or there will be consequences.”

Once the Death Eater was gone, James and Lily joined them again.

James began, “So here’s my plan—”

“Let me stop you right there,” Lily said. “You’re going to say that these three should get out of here, because there’s no way they could possibly know where we’re going, so they might as well leave the great escape to us.”

“You still know me so well,” James said, starry-eyed.

Remus worked it out; he smiled. “There’s another way.”

“I’m still bugged,” Lily said. At James’ blank expression, she explained, “It’s a bit of Muggle technology that allows you to listen in on a conversation from far away.”

“Fantastic. Why’s it that our lot haven’t worked out to do that yet?”

“Oh, I’m sure they have,” Snape said. “But vanishingly few wizards have any need for petty espionage when you can simply use a truth potion.”

Sirius sneered at him. “This isn’t any normal kind of situation. You say you’re spying for Dumbledore, but I’ve yet to see evidence that you do any actual espionage besides licking Malfoy’s arse all day.”

“I’ll give you your evidence. The Order needs a plant in the organisation. I was a card-carrying Death Eater, when I was younger and less wise—”

“Arguable that you’re any more wise now,” Sirius said.

“Oh, for—I was one of them when I was younger, and I’ve been a defector ever since… that night. I know what Pettigrew did. I found out too late. I had to live with the fact that I couldn’t save you.” He paused, breathless with anger. Remus knew that when Snape said _you_ , he meant Lily. Snape continued: “Dumbledore sent me here as soon as he heard news that Potter was alive. He guessed that there was a high chance Lily was alive too, and that she would come here, and would need a friend on her side.”

“He didn’t guess,” Lily said. “I’ve been in contact with Dumbledore since shortly after my ‘death.’ He told me that for my safety, I couldn’t return to Britain so long as the war was still going. He was the one who set me up with the new identity, the job in East Berlin.”

Nobody knew—nobody had known until the lot of them, today—what had really happened that night. The war waged on, until gradually the Death Eater attacks became less frequent and more chaotic, the clear sign of a dying organisation. The last of them escaped, or were rounded up. It was only during the trials that people had thought to ask where their leader had gone. By then, Liesel Gensch was busy holding down the war effort on the continent, and everyone thought James and Harry Potter were dead.

But whether Dumbledore had set these pieces in play so neatly, whether they were heading for a foregone conclusion—Remus couldn’t be sure.

“If recent history has taught me anything,” he said, “it’s that I don’t know who I can trust. No offence, Lily.”

“None taken.”

“So,” Remus said, “you’ll forgive me for not accepting your stories at face value. However—”

“Some offence taken,” James said. “That’s my wife you’re talking about!”

To Remus’ surprise, Sirius cut in: “Come on, James. This isn’t Hogwarts anymore. I know that what’s happened to you is shit beyond reason, but the rest of us haven’t exactly been frolicking through the fields either. Well—maybe Snape’s had a bit of a cushy life.”

“Lots of offence taken,” Snape said.

“The point is,” Remus said, steering them back on track, “none of us can trust each other.” Until some minutes ago, he wouldn’t have said they could trust him, either. “I have Lily bugged, and I will trust her to verbalise what her surroundings look like, as the three of them are taken to meet He Who Must Not Be Named. But I want one more level of protection. James—how conceivable is it that Harry might be able to create a big black dog?”

“Oh, I like this.” James grinned, slapping Remus on the shoulder. “You ever pretend you saw the Grim in your tea leaves?”

Remus nodded solemnly. “In every Divination lesson. It was uncanny.”

“Oh, I saw it all the time,” Sirius said. “Sometimes even in the mirror.”

“Fuck off,” Snape said, “don’t tell me both of you can turn into dogs.”

“Only once a month,” Remus said.

Sirius, Lily, and James all laughed at that, but Remus found himself cringing; he hadn’t meant to say it so plainly. Thinking about how Snape had found out that he was a werewolf always gave him a headache, or insomnia, or both.

James nudged him. “We only need one of the dogs out tonight. Now imagine the look on Snape’s face when he finds out Sirius and I both became unregistered Animagi when we were fifteen.”

“You _what_?”

 

* * *

 

Night must have fallen over Île des Sortilèges. Remus was far away from it, sequestered underground. Waiting. He sat in the rose bush room with Snape, both of them cloaked by heavy protective spells, while Sirius and the Potters prepared to be taken to Voldemort. Remus had his headset back in, so he heard everything that was said—Sirius being formally introduced as Harry’s godfather, who by the way could turn into a dog, and the great production he made of showing Harry his tricks. It made Harry laugh, which was the most impossible, incredible sound in the world. It kept Remus company.

At a quarter to twelve, a group of several Death Eaters stormed down the corridor and unlocked the door to Harry’s cell.

“What is this?” one of them demanded. Remus thought it might’ve been Avery.

“I don’t know,” Lily said. Padfoot growled, and she made a convincingly frightened sound. “We were working on extending Harry’s capabilities when he just… _created_ it.”

“We think it’s the Grim,” James added, less convincing but a valiant effort nonetheless.

“And he just made it out of nothing?” Avery demanded. “Then he really is ready.”

Impatient as ever, James muttered, “That’s what I said.”

Avery ignored him. “The Grim is a powerful symbol of Dark magic. The Dark Lord will be most pleased by this progress. There’s no time to waste.”

With what time they had, Avery couldn’t have been taking them far.

“This island fascinates me,” Lily said as they set off. She spoke softly, like she was only talking to James. “Of course I’m scared, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see more of this place. Look—we turn a corner and it’s completely different.”

That was their signal that the coast was clear. Nevertheless, Remus checked and triple-checked before leaving the room. The door to Harry’s room had been left ajar; the lights were off.

“I don’t suppose your bug can tell you which way they’ve gone,” Snape said.

“What’s the matter, never used your intuition on the job?” Remus bit his lip. Snape didn’t need to know that the only reason they weren’t tracking Lily properly was because he’d panicked earlier. “Sorry. This is no time for teasing. Let’s just go back the way we came and see if we can pick up any trace.”

Remus wasn’t too proud of putting all his faith in intuition. He was fully prepared for everything to go wrong. If their charms fell, he had smoke bombs crammed into his pockets, and his wand and gun both holstered to his right leg. If that failed, at least he would’ve gone down fighting.

They followed the same path they’d taken earlier, using the distorted sculptures they remembered as a guide. Remus recognised now that these weren’t sculptures—they were experiments. Voldemort must have known that he would have no influence over Harry himself, so with a threat hanging over their heads he had convinced James to train Harry in the Dark Arts. More than that, he had them push the boundaries of known magic itself. It was the Department of Mysteries, transplanted to an underground labyrinth beneath an uninhabited island off the south coast of France. All in aid of turning the child prophesied to kill Voldemort into his most powerful ally.

As they neared the metal door leading back into the stone crypt, Remus heard James in his headset: “Fresh air. Merlin, I haven’t… fresh air. Bloody hell.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” Avery said. “The Dark Lord will not be returning to the island on this occasion. We’ve arranged for a Portkey to transport you to him at the stroke of midnight.”

“Five minutes,” Snape whispered.

“They must be on the surface,” Remus said. “We need to stop them from taking that Portkey.”

Through the door, he ran like he’d never run before, Snape at his heels. It was likely that this place was cloaked in anti-Apparition spells, just like the Manoir, so it had to be running. Snape directed Remus to another way out—a ladder to another one of the shacks on the beach, which Remus gathered he’d been too cruel to show them earlier. From there, it was a dash across the sand and up a damp grassy hill—it had rained.

There was a shout in Remus’ headset. He heard it flying through the night air, too. As he crested the hill, he threw off his headset and lost it in the grass where it fell. He grabbed out his wand and cast a shield charm. There were four Death Eaters, masked, against two.

“Remus!” James said, waving without turning his head. “I can cast any spell I want out here!”

Indeed, the next moment he stunned one of the Death Eaters, all while engaged in a duel with another. There were two more, and Lily was duelling them at once, while Harry stood back, crouched behind Padfoot. Remus glanced over his shoulder. Snape had disappeared.

In many ways, he’d been expecting this. The Death Eaters needed to think Snape was still one of them. It was a clever move, and certainly not the bravado Remus was used to. He begrudgingly allowed himself to respect Snape for it. But Remus was still a Gryffindor at heart, running about the Hogwarts grounds at night with his friends and trespassing on places they shouldn’t have been. He raised his wand and sent a curse at the Death Eaters duelling Lily without a second thought. If it was too reckless, if they’d been injured—in his line of work, you got used to it.

One of the Death Eaters he’d aimed for stumbled backwards. Remus called out, “Lily, you take that one!” He was sure she was an excellent duellist, but her life was more important than Remus’ in this situation. Harry needed his parents in one piece.

The other Death Eater turned to Remus; ducking pre-emptively, he threw a Jelly-Legs Jinx at the Death Eater and then a full-body bind. The Death Eater was down in moments. Lily had incapacitated hers too.

James was still struggling with his—it had, after all, surely been nine years since he’d last used magic unrestrained. Remus was impressed he’d already done this much.

“Give it up,” the Death Eater said. It was Avery; no wonder he was the one in command around here. Even with the added force of Remus and Lily against him, he was too fast, too strong. One of his spells whistled past James and grazed him in the arm.

“The Dark Lord will know,” Avery said, “if you don’t arrive on time, he’ll—”

There was a crack in the air behind them. Everyone’s guard went down except Remus’—one threat at a time. He hit Avery with the full force of a stunning spell, and Avery fell backwards like a stone.

The disadvantage of being the last one to react to a sound was that when Remus turned around, Sirius had resumed his human form, and he and the Potters were staring, soundless, at Voldemort. Remus had never seen Voldemort in the flesh—if you could call the skin stretched over his bones flesh at all. He had eyes like coin slots on a Muggle vending machine and no nose at all, no hair either. He was more creature than man; Remus could sympathise with that, but he couldn’t begin to imagine how it had happened. Had Voldemort done this to himself?

When Voldemort spoke, the wind whistled through his teeth, the sound half a hiss. “I see now what the delay has been. You thought to avoid me by avoiding the Portkey—very well. I should have foreseen this.”

He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm. There was a Dark Mark branded on his forearm, a familiar sight to anyone who had fought in the war. When he touched it, the Mark let out steam, like Voldemort’s fingers were a red-hot poker. Seconds later, seven pinpricks of light appeared in the sky around him, and resolved themselves into Death Eaters, perched on brooms or landing benignly on the ground.

These were the ones who had remained at large, after the captures, after the trials. Some of them wore masks. Others, like Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy, clearly did not see the need. Their covers were long since blown.

Sirius had Harry by the hand. He could have Apparated. Remus was absurdly grateful that he didn’t—they had a chance to end this for good, here and now. They would need all the force they could.

“Give me the weapon,” Voldemort said.

“Or what? You’ll kill the lot of us?” James laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”

Voldemort laughed too. “In time, you will. If you come quietly, there will be no need for your companions to die. I only need one death tonight.”

“Then let it be mine,” Lily said, “and let my son go.”

James ran to her side. “Lily! Don’t you dare—”

“That, I do not intend to do either,” Voldemort said calmly. “A sacrifice must have some meaning. The weapon would not be what it is without your assistance, James Potter. It is your life that must be taken.”

James did not seem to care that Voldemort had put a target on his back. He charged at Voldemort with his wand out, shouting, “He’s not a fucking weapon! Harry’s my son!”

Every wand on the island raised in unison.

Voldemort himself did not take part in the fighting—he stood back as two masked Death Eaters charged James. James’ earlier stiffness was all gone. He swung his wand in a broad circle, shooting barbed sparks at the Death Eaters.

Two Death Eaters went for Lily, and Bellatrix for Sirius. The Death Eater nearest to Remus singled him out as a mark. He ran for Remus, which was a great mistake, because at such a close range Remus could just shoot him and be done with it. Wizards never expected a gun. But when the Death Eater came nearer, he let his mask drop for a brief moment, and Remus was looking Severus Snape in the eyes.

“Engage another,” Snape whispered. “I’ll help you stall.”

“Knew you’d come through in the end,” Remus said, smirking.

“Oh, keep a lid on it.”

Remus shot a benign but sparkly spell at Snape and hoped everyone else was too busy to notice it did nothing; he swung his wand arm to point at one of the Death Eaters going after Lily and sent out a _Tarantallegra_ , just for fun. While the Death Eater danced uncontrollably, the other redoubled their efforts on Lily, and one of the Death Eaters duelling James turned to Remus as well, recognising him as the biggest threat on the field. Remus privately thought that Sirius might have been a more imposing foe than he was, but he was engaged with Bellatrix, hurling curses both magical and crude. Remus didn’t dare look over his shoulder to see how Sirius fared.

Now he had two Death Eaters and Snape coming at him. Remus didn’t expect Snape would attack one of his own under the clear night of the moon, so he threw a smoke bomb. It took time—the pause was enough for one of the Death Eaters to hit him with a stinging hex. His wand arm was on fire. Remus clenched his jaw and concentrated to clear his mind of the pain. It was one of the techniques the Russians had taught him, its only flaw that it wasted crucial time. But with smoke hanging between Remus and the Death Eaters, none of their spells were aimed right.

When at last the pain was at a manageable level, Remus lashed out again and blast a path through the smoke towards the two real Death Eaters, a hex following shortly after. They were already stumbling; Snape must’ve used the cover as Remus intended. Remus petrified one of them, and tied them to the other. He cleared the last of the smoke and saw that Snape was doubled over, coughing.

“Sorry,” Remus said, before putting him in a relatively light full body bind. Snape wouldn’t have heard him apologise, but it was the thought that counted. Remus was sure that Snape would understand.

He stepped back for a moment to survey the rest of the action. In all of this, he’d lost track of Harry. Thankfully, he now saw that Harry was as far away from Voldemort as he could be. Between them, James was still duelling one Death Eater and Lily had reduced her two to one—Lucius. Sirius was still facing off against Bellatrix—they were duelling to kill. Voldemort still hovered benignly a metre or two above the grassy hillside.

“You see?” Remus pointed his wand at the fallen Death Eaters in a jabbing motion, and drew an arc to aim it square at Voldemort. “Do you see what we’re capable of?”

Voldemort bowed his head. “I see that I have let this go on long enough. Bellatrix, finish Black, and then kill the spare.”

“Yes, my Lord!” said Bellatrix, and ran backwards, her wand still aimed at Sirius.

The Death Eater duelling James fell to one side. Lucius Disapparated. Remus grabbed his gun from the holster and, hands steady, unclicked the safety. Harry let out a yell and ran across the hillside towards James and Lily.

Three Killing Curses were fired at once.

The first was from Bellatrix, full of mirth, her eyes locked on her cousin.

The second was from Sirius, his back to Remus but his shoulders set firm, no hesitation in his voice.

The third was fired by Voldemort, condescending to raise his wand at last, and aimed at James.

Bellatrix and Sirius’ curses never hit their targets—they connected in mid-air and exploded in a firebomb of green light, setting alight the grass between them and singing the robes of the nearby fallen Death Eaters.

Voldermort’s curse never hit its target either. Harry ran between James and the spell, and he glowed like a lit flare. He had no wand, and he needed no wand. This was the magic that Harry and James had spent nine years perfecting, and it was vivid, vicious. The killing curse hit him square in the forehead.

When the sparks and the smoke from the grass fire cleared, Harry was still standing, fists clenched at his sides.

James and Lily both cried Harry’s name, and he turned to run straight into their waiting arms. None of them saw—nor cared to see, Remus imagined—what happened to Voldemort as the spell reflected back onto him.

The various stunned and petrified Death Eaters began to stir, Snape included. They turned their eyes on their leader in time to watch his body collapse in on itself, his flesh wasting away to reveal his rotting bones, and his bones crumble to dust. There was a wisp of a man still inhabiting his robes, but he was weak, very weak.

Bellatrix was the first to snap out of her shock. “Well don’t just stand there! We have to get the Dark Lord to safety! Severus!”

“One moment,” Snape said. He walked up to Remus and grabbed him by the collar, neither noticing nor caring that Remus was holding a gun and, one step too close, it might have fired. “Horcruxes,” Snape said. “Find his Horcruxes. Sorry about this.”

Snape kicked Remus in the shin, and Remus’ legs buckled beneath him. As he fell to his knees, Sirius came running towards him.

“Are you okay?” Sirius asked.

“Nothing a bit of dittany won’t fix,” Remus said. This was nothing compared to the stinging hex. He turned his gun’s safety back on and tucked it into his waistband. “For what it’s worth, the bastard apologised.”

Sirius pressed a quick kiss to Remus’ forehead. “I’ll get him next time.”

“My apologies, Bellatrix,” Snape said loudly, as she and another Death Eater surrounded Voldemort with protective spells. “I had to deal with an old enemy.”

“They don’t matter now, you fool!” Bellatrix turned to Remus and Sirius. “But I’ll be back for you. Don’t imagine for one second you can hide from me!”

Then she Disapparated, along with the other Death Eater and Snape, the three of them holding onto the ectoplasmic form that had once been Lord Voldemort.

One by one, the other Death Eaters Disapparated, until only one was left staggering to his feet—the first one James had stunned. Remus evaluated that this Death Eater was not a threat and ignored him. With Sirius’ help, he got to his feet and went towards the Potter family, huddled together on the grass.

“You did it, Harry,” James was saying, his arms around Harry and his voice heavy with sobs. “You did it, you did it, you did it.”

Lily was just crying, no words at all. Harry was teary too, but he looked proud of himself. He had a scar burnt into his forehead, the wild branches of a lightning bolt where the Killing Curse had hit him. Remus wondered what would happen to Harry now—could they send him to Hogwarts, with all this impossible magic flowing through his veins?

James looked up at last, and his eyes went wide. “Behind you.”

Remus’ hand went to his gun as he looked over his shoulder. The last Death Eater was walking towards them, one shaky arm pointing his wand at them.

“Leave us,” Sirius said. “Haven’t your lot done enough?”

“I need to—” the Death Eater began. “You need to wait—”

That voice was familiar. A years-old memory, a cautious voice at the border of the Forbidden Forest, a whispered, _Wait, it could be dangerous—I’ll go ahead and check_. The flick of a tail. _Wait for me_.

“No,” James said. “Not you.”

It couldn’t be. Peter Pettigrew had died in a rogue explosion when the Order had been sent to round up Sirius after he had—but Sirius hadn’t betrayed the Potters. Peter had. Peter had framed Sirius and he might have had the Order surveilling Sirius for Merlin knows how long. It wasn’t inconceivable that Peter had fabricated that explosion, too, as he had his own death.

Peter pushed his mask back and shook his head. “I’m sorry, James.”

“Don’t call me that,” James said, getting to his feet. Sirius and Lily stood too, Lily holding Harry’s hand in a vice-grip.

James and Sirius raised their wands, and Peter was a mirror image of their motion, as ever.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“I got sent to Azkaban for your murder,” Sirius said. Among other things, he did not say. “Maybe I’ll finally do something to deserve it.”

Sirius would regret being a killer. Remus thought about every person he had killed every day of his life. He would not let that happen to Sirius too.

Mind made up, Remus took the safety off his gun again. Peter took a step closer. Remus fired.

The bullet hit him in the shoulder.

Peter let out a cry as he fell backwards onto the charred grass, blood red darkening his black robes a shade closer to the night sky. Remus shut his eyes, and said nothing.

This would hurt. Remus knew a little too well how to make a man hurt, but Peter had done enough harm already that Remus didn’t care what happened to him. James and Harry were safe, and Remus was tired. None of them needed a ghost from the past. They just needed to rest.

With a silent nod of gratitude, Sirius held out his hand to help Remus stand again.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Harry,” Remus said. “Merlin knows you’ve seen enough.”

Harry was quiet. They would explain everything to him later.

Lily squeezed his hand. “Let’s get out of here. Ready for your first Apparition, Harry?”

James’ expression was dark. “Harry’s already learnt to Apparate.”

“There’s no need for it,” Sirius said. “We came by boat.”

“I’ve never been in a boat,” Harry said. He grinned, a wild look in his eyes. “There’s so much I haven’t done—let’s do it all, right now!”

If he did go to Hogwarts, Remus thought, this one would be a Gryffindor like his parents.

 

* * *

 

The boat bobbed into the harbour of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, cutting white foam through the water, sparkling with the first rays of the rising sun. When it had left, there were two people in the boat. Now there were five, the two who had sailed out, and a family of three, newly reunited.

Harry was fast asleep, his head in Lily’s lap. Lily was dozing off herself—this suited James just fine, as he seemed to have boundless energy, and spent the boat trip catching up with his old friends. He was fascinated by their tales of working for the great foreign powers and the Muggle war. Remus made the boat go a little slower; he could never resist indulging James.

“And when did you,” James said, “ _you know_.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “What?”

This was rich, considering that he had his arm around Remus’ shoulder.

“We only reunited five days ago,” Remus reminded James. “The answer is, recently.”

“Wow,” James said. “I mean, I guessed as much, but… wow. I’ve been waiting twenty years for this to happen.”

“Shut up, we haven’t known each other for twenty years,” Sirius said.

“Hyperbole,” Remus said. In fact, it was closer to eighteen, and James had certainly not been waiting that long for Remus and Sirius to act on their evident-in-hindsight adoration of one another. These high-stakes situations had a way of bringing that out in people.

“We haven’t seen each other for nine,” James pointed out. “I’ve been counting the days. I suppose I’ll fall asleep eventually, and when I wake up I won’t believe that any of this has happened. Like some kind of delayed shock. Right now I feel like I could stay awake for another nine years.”

“Just until we get back to the hotel,” Remus said. “We have two rooms; you and Harry can take the presidential suite with Lily.”

“She had the presidential suite all to herself?”

Remus paled. That was one thing he hadn’t explained. “Actually—she and I were—you have to understand, it was as part of our cover—we were pretending to be married.”

He needn’t have worried. James thought this was the greatest story in the world.

They pulled into the docks, and James shook Harry’s shoulder lightly. “We’re back on the mainland.”

Windswept and exhausted, the small party made their way back to the hotel, through the sleepy streets of  a temporary ghost town. It was too early for anyone to be up other than the bakers—the warm smell of bread followed them to the hotel’s front steps. Harry had woken right up, his eyes darting from building to building. Remus was afraid that it might be too much for him, but James made a great show of pointing out all the things he’d taught Harry while they were kept captive and Harry was delighted by each and every one. Remus kept his doubts to himself.

The hotel lobby was empty of guests, but there were staff rushing about preparing for the day ahead. Remus almost missed the old man in startling violet robes, sitting in a high armchair to one side of the main reception. He was so egregiously a wizard that it was likely the Muggle staff didn’t notice him at all.

“Dumbledore?” Lily said, frowning.

Albus Dumbledore had aged since Remus had last seen him, before his final mission for the Order. There was still that twinkle in his eye, though, an artefact of the way the light caught on his glasses but no less of a spark. He raised one hand in a lazy wave.

Lily’s frown deepened to an outright scowl. “Harry, why don’t you and your dad go to bed? Remus—you have the room key?”

He handed it over. James understood what was going on, even if Harry didn’t. This was spy business.

There were two other chairs by Dumbledore. Lily took one and Remus the other; Sirius perched on the arm of Remus’ chair.

“I am most glad to see that your mission was successful,” Dumbledore said. “I should like to meet Harry Potter.”

“You will,” Lily said coolly, “when we enrol him in Hogwarts.”

Dumbledore nodded. “And Severus? I notice he isn’t with you.”

“Isn’t he?” Sirius said. “Pity.”

“Speaking of Severus,” Lily said, “you didn’t think it might be good to tell me that he’s working for you too? I had to find out he was on our side in the secret basement of an island just off the coast, while pretending that I would be helping my husband turn our son into a weapon for He Who Must Not Be Named.”

“Yes, I am sorry about that,” Dumbledore said blithely. “However, I’m sure you’re aware that, in our profession, it is best that none of us know anything about any of the rest of us. Excepting those of us at the helm, of course.”

Lily took a deep breath in, and did not sigh. “So you planted Severus with the Malfoys so that I would have a way in, and then sent these two to get me in contact with him?” She jerked her thumb at Remus and Sirius.

“Not quite. I first sent Severus some time ago, when I realised—belatedly, to my discredit—that there was a possibility the Malfoys were harbouring Lord Voldemort in their French residence. He discovered this was the case, and also discerned that James was still alive. I thought it would be inadvisable to tell you directly. In such a situation, and for someone so emotionally invested as yourself, you would be liable to rush in. I simply fed the information to the relevant parties, with the assumption that both the Americans and the Russians would want the weapon for themselves, and that at the very least either Sirius or Remus would make it to you. I did not expect that _both_ of them would show up. That was quite the surprise.”

Dumbledore chuckled to himself, and Lily glared at him. “You used me. You could have _told_ me—I’m not insensible of these things.”

“Wait,” Sirius said. “They told me were teaming up with the Russians because this mission would need the extra help, but that afterwards I was to take the weapon for… for the Americans.”

Remus stared, open-mouthed, at Sirius. “It was the same for me. I was so ready to betray you, too.”

“I was almost hoping you would,” SIrius said. “That would’ve made it easier.”

“None of us were to know what the weapon would turn out to be,” Dumbledore said kindly.

“What the hell am I meant to tell the Americans?” Sirius said. “What’s Remus going to tell the Russians?”

“I don’t give a shit what you tell them,” Lily snapped. This was harder on her than on any of them; Remus wouldn’t blame her for nearing the end of her tether. “Harry is coming back to England with James and me, and that’s final.”

“Of course,” Dumbledore said, “and you will be under my full protection, if you choose to accept it. Sirius—I will see to it that your name is cleared.”

If it was that easy, Remus thought, why hadn’t Dumbledore done it in the first place? Perhaps once he’d thought to, Sirius had been long gone.

Sirius huffed. “Well, what choice do we have?”

“It’s that or coming back empty handed,” Remus said. “And if you’re angling to get something out of the bargain… I’ll take my chances working for my old spymaster again.”

“You were always one of my most valuable assets,” Dumbledore said. “I would be glad to have both you and Sirius working for the Order again.”

Which meant: _You’ll die if you don’t_.

And since Remus was working for the Order now, he might as well pass this on: “There’s one more thing. Before he left with He Who Must Not Be Named, Snape said to _find his Horcruxes_. Does that mean anything to any of you?”

Sirius and Lily looked blank, but Dumbledore’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

“I’m afraid it does. And it means we have a lot more work ahead of us.”

 

* * *

 

Lily went back to the presidential suite, and Remus followed Sirius to his small hotel room. His clothes were still upstairs, but that hardly mattered. Come the evening, they would pack their things and leave. Sirius had the empty house in London, which his parents hadn’t left to him but which he’d take all the same. Remus had nowhere to go—he never did—but he thought it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that Sirius would have a spare bed for him.

When he articulated this, Sirius said, “Are you mental? You’re living in my room. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

They were on the bed, lying on their sides and facing one another. Remus was willing to concede that he had been a bit of an idiot about that one. He managed a laugh. “Will you also drive me to the countryside every full moon?”

“Don’t test me,” Sirius said. His American accent was already wearing off. “If you want to drive, I’ll learn to drive.”

“You can’t drive a car? Alright, one thing at a time.”

“How different can it be from a bike?” Sirius said, shrugging. “Well, there’s also a very fine basement at Grimmauld Place. You know, if you want somewhere safe to transform.”

“I’m done with basements and attics,” Remus said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Why would I mind?”

Sirius took Remus by both his hands. They hadn’t talked about this, but it was a tacit agreement so loud that even James, who could be startlingly oblivious for someone with such a sharp mind, had noticed it. It all felt very rushed. Remus wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Remus,” Sirius said. “You nearly betrayed me to sell a child to the Russians, and I’m still here. I think it’s safe to assume I’m not going anywhere.”

“I did _not_ know the weapon was a child,” Remus said. “And I never said you’d go anywhere.”

“You didn’t say it, but I saw you thinking it.”

Remus was out of energy to argue; he rested his head on Sirius’ shoulder and closed his eyes. Sirius’ arms closed around him and they lay like that for some moments, in silence.

“And I didn’t know either,” Sirius said, “that it was… Harry. My godson. I was thinking, Remus, that they could come and live with us too. There’s certainly room for five at Grimmauld Place. I don’t suppose they’d want to go back to Godric’s Hollow after what happened there.”

“Pity. It was a nice house.”

“We can make Grimmauld Place nice,” Sirius said. He made a face. “That’s a foreign concept.”

Remus pulled back so that he was looking Sirius in the eye. “So’s the whole damn country. But we’re going back there anyway.”

“Only nine years late,” Sirius said.

“You must’ve had quite some adventures these past nine years. Now that our mission’s over, we have a lot to catch up on.”

Sirius gave Remus a cocky grin and opened his mouth to respond, but what came out was a yawn. Remus was all too aware that his own expression had turned into something disastrously fond. It was only just dawning on him how much he had missed Sirius—it seemed ridiculous, in hindsight, that they could’ve gone so long apart.

“Maybe we should sleep, first,” Remus said.

“If we must,” Sirius said. “But, if you’ve got no objections, I’d like to show this bed a bit of proper use before we leave.”

 

* * *

 

On the first of September, 1991, the five inhabitants of 12 Grimmauld Place pulled up to King’s Cross Station in Remus’ car, which Sirius was still not very good at driving. As cool as Harry thought it would be to pull up on the back of a motorcycle, Lily had insisted that they take the car, so all of them could see him off. For the adults of the party, it was as much about nostalgia as looking out for Harry.

By now, Harry was used to being stared at wherever he went. There had been an inflammatory article in the Prophet that got most of the details wrong, but was correct at the core of it: that James, Lily, and Harry Potter had not been killed after all, and had now resurfaced, alive and well, after a confrontation with Death Eaters in the south of France. The article also linked Remus and Sirius to the whole mess, exposing Remus as a werewolf and slandering Sirius for being an Azkaban escapee, even though his name had been cleared and, actually, escaping from Azkaban was quite the impressive feat. It could have been worse—at least the author of the article hadn’t cottoned on that they were spies.

As well as that, the article suggested that Harry had extraordinary powers, but did not make the connection to Voldemort, and did not mention that he had survived the Killing Curse. Small mercies, which didn’t make the trip to Diagon Alley to pick up school supplies any easier, least of all when the wand that chose Harry turned out to be the twin of Voldemort’s.

Remus was trying not to think about that. He was here to see his godson-almost-in-law off on his first day at Hogwarts. Nothing more.

He was the last through the barrier at Platform 9¾. The sheer force of the memories contained on this platform nearly knocked Remus off his feet—it was now nineteen years since he’d first set foot here. He wondered what Hogwarts would be like in peacetime. He imagined going back. Maybe as a teacher. That would be a real laugh. Maybe not while Snape was teaching there, though. That would be a real nightmare.

“Was it always this busy?” James was saying, leaning on the trolley with Harry’s things on it. “I don’t remember it being this busy. Or this small. I guess everything looks bigger when you’re a kid.”

“Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” Harry said. “Stop talking so loud.”

Lily ruffled Harry’s hair. “Now, don’t be like that. Your parents are the only people in the world who’re allowed to embarrass you—and your godfathers, if you’re really naughty.” She seemed to remember something, and frowned. “But don’t let any other kids embarrass you. If anyone’s picking on you, you owl us right away, and then you tell your head of house.”

“And don’t make friends with any Slytherins,” James added.

Harry grimaced. “What if I’m in Slytherin?”

“Unlikely,” Sirius said.

“What house you’re in doesn’t matter to us at all,” Lily said. “Isn’t that right?”

She threw a pointed look at the rest of them—Remus was almost offended to be included in its blast radius, but he had been guilty of the same thinking as Sirius. He would not be surprised when they inevitably received word that Harry had been sorted into Gryffindor.

“Oh,” Harry said, “there’s my friends, I’ve got to go, see you later, bye!”

Harry was going to Hogwarts with two friends already made, a Weasley and a Longbottom. They were the children of other Order members, who had been so welcoming to the Potters on their return, and hadn’t given a damn what was in the Prophet. Harry grabbed the trolley from James, trunk and owl’s cage clattering on top of it, and ran off as fast as he could.

“Let him go,” James said. “We’ll catch up with him again before the train leaves.”

They were early—Lily had insisted on it. Remus didn’t mind hanging around the platform. He saw a handful familiar faces, but most of them pretended not to recognise him. Even by association with the famous Potters and the last Black, there was no escaping the word _werewolf_.

“You know,” Lily said, “I was worried, but it seems like everything is going to be just—”

— _fine_ , Remus imagined she would’ve said, if she hadn’t been swooped by an owl that very moment. Lily took the letter off the owl’s leg and it flew off right away. This wasn’t a missive that needed a reply. Remus would be surprised if he didn’t see a _burn after reading_ at the end.

And he would see the letter. Written on the top of the envelope was, _To Lily Potter, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black_.

“Hey,” James said, “that’s not fair. What about me?”

Remus ignored him and read the letter. It was brief, written out in a tidy but ornamental hand.

_I have received some new information about the whereabouts of the missing pieces. Come at your earliest convenience to the Hog’s Head Inn, Hogsmeade. With luck, we will be able to speak before the students arrive. - AD_

“The missing pieces,” Sirius said, amused. “So that’s what we’re calling them now.”

Dumbledore was referring to Voldemort’s Horcruxes, which Remus now knew to be an extreme form of Dark Magic, the act of splitting one’s soul and storing it in something—or someone—else. This was how he had stayed alive when when his physical form had been damaged. The very act of their creation necessitated the act of taking another’s life. By now Remus had realised that, that night on the Île des Sortilèges, Voldemort had been planning to kill James to turn Harry into a Horcrux. That had failed, but it told them one very important thing: Voldemort had multiple Horcruxes, and he chose his victims for their significance to the Horcrux he was trying to create. This was why it had to be James.

“You can read it,” Remus said, handing the letter to James. “There’s nothing here you won’t understand.”

“I suppose we’re going to Hogsmeade, then,” Lily said.

As James read, Sirius put one arm around Remus’ shoulders and one around Lily’s. “Well, you know what this means,” Sirius said. “Ready for another mission together?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said, shaking him off. “I barely put up with you last time, when you were busy gatecrashing parties and generally making a nuisance of yourself.”

“At least I never betrayed my companions to the enemy.”

“Would you let that go?”

“Well,” Remus said, “this is off to a great start.”

The Hogwarts Express let out a whistle, and the crowd started to shift. James and Lily called for Harry to say one last goodbye; Sirius still had an arm around Remus. Whatever happened next—they were ready for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!
> 
> Some brief notes:
> 
>   * This fic shares its title with a Joy Division song, which was one of the songs that inspired me as I worked and gave me an idea of what kind of scene I wanted to set.
>   * There are a couple of direct quotes from the HP books in here. "Together?" "I think so" is something that Sirius and Remus say to each other twice in the Shrieking Shack scene in PoA. (I _know_.) "Kill the spare" is nicked from GoF.
>   * There's also a quote of a scene from Doctor Who, where 10 and Donna see each other on either side of a glass window and communicate entirely by waving. Credit where it's due, etc.
>   * I chose Remus' pseudonym Ilya in homage to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Liesel is a derivative of Elizabeth, as is Lily, and Gensch and Evans are both derived from names that basically mean John. Sirius' pseudonym has no deep meaning other than that I just thought it sounded funny.
> 



End file.
